A Great Day to Die
by Tobias Umbra
Summary: In a time when Fox has pushed away all of the people important to him, a deadly encounter with Wolf may cost Fox both his sanity and his life. A look into the minds of both Fox McCloud and Wolf O'Donnell.
1. Act One: The Fallen Fox

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Let me say up front: I HATED Star Fox Command. Almost every way that the story ended, sucked. Plus, the villains were horrible, and Peppy was doing General Pepper's job instead of being in the _Great Fox_ where he belongs. I thought the game sucked major donkey balls. However, I did like the setup. I liked the idea of Fox pushing away the entrie StarFox team, and the emotional effect it had on him. After playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl, I had an idea for this story, where we see not only Fox and how the absence of those important to him has affected him, but also tries to examine why Wolf acts the way he does (especially with that awesome Western accent he had in Brawl). And so, here is my version of how things went after StarFox Assault. Be warned that this story is knee-deep in violence, profanity, and some sexuality. But I'm sure you'll still have loads of fun reading it. Enjoy.

* * *

_Space. It's not the final frontier anymore, but it still has its perks. There's this peacefulness to it. It's a kind of cold silence that you can lose yourself in._

_I never noticed how quiet it was before. There was always Falco muttering some smart-assed comment on the comm., or Slippy giving some hyperactive cheer. Even Krystal would join in and let us know that we weren't alone._

_They're all gone, now._

_Because of me. I'll admit it._

_It started with Krystal. I wanted her from the moment I saw her. As we grew closer, I began to love her. It wasn't just the way she looked or acted, or the way that we kissed or the way we made love, it was EVERYTHING about her. She set my blood on fire even more than a dogfight in an asteroid field. Krystal was an addiction. I was hooked._

_Then the Aparoids invaded. Team StarFox was called in to save the Lylat System, yet again. And for once, I felt scared. Not for the lives of the trillions of people we were fighting to protect, not for the lives of Peppy, Falco, Slippy, or even for my own life. I was scared shitless of losing Krystal. She was the only woman I'd ever loved, and the thought of losing her to some star fighter's guns, the same way I lost my Father, tore my heart out._

_After the Aparoid Invasion, I asked her to leave. I told her I didn't want her flying anymore, because I was afraid of what might happen to her. We argued, and I got cocky. I told her that she wasn't a part of StarFox anymore, and she left with a broken heart. Before she left, she told me that I was the worst thing that had ever happened to her._

_Irony's a bitch, isn't it?_

_Things were all downhill after that._

_General Pepper got sick and retired, and offered his job up to Peppy. Peppy took the job up, reasoning that we could take care of ourselves._

_I never bothered to tell Peppy how much I looked up to him. If the man was good enough to fly with my Dad, then it actually means something for Peppy to say that my father would be proud of me. I never realized how hard it could be to lead the team without his guidance._

_Slippy went on a 'temporary sabbatical' to propose and build a marriage with his girlfriend, Amanda. I let him go, happy that he could hold onto something that I couldn't for once. I kept giving him more and more time away to make sure he wouldn't screw things up and end up miserable like me. Eventually, Slippy stopped asking to come back. Maybe he thought I didn't want him back. Maybe he realized that StarFox was doomed, and got out when he had the chance._

_Not that it matters any more._

_Interestingly enough, Falco was the last to leave. Every time he saw me moping or drowning in self pity, he complained about how bored he was and demanded that we take the Arwings out for a race or something. Only now do I see that it was Falco's own way of trying to help me back to normal. The night before he left was Krystal's 'birthday'. She couldn't remember her real one, so we all just threw her a birthday party on the anniversary of the day she joined the team. I found one of the bracelets she must've left behind under my bed, and I got stone drunk in the hopes that I could just forget her for a while. Because of this, I always remember that night a little differently. Sometimes, I remember cool, sarcastic Falco breaking down in a way that I've never seen before. Sometimes, I remember Falco telling me angrily that if I wasn't going to forgive myself and stop flushing my life down the toilet, he wasn't going to watch me fall apart piece by piece._

_Sometimes, I remember him just leaving without an explanation, a word, or even a goodbye. Sometimes it's all three._

_Which means I'm alone out here, just me and the robot. Might as well be just me, though._

_ROB was never that much of a conversationalist. And he never loses when you play chess against him._

_They say that in space, no one can hear you scream. That's because, almost 99 percent of the time, when you're in space you're alone for a hundred light-years in every direction._

_Even if I was in the middle of the Cornerian capitol, I would still be just as alone as I am out here._

* * *

The secluded planet of Temple, located about 162 parsecs from the outer rims of the Lylat System, was essentially a galactic dump.

For nearly a light year spreading out from the planet in all directions were vast fields of scrapped starships, battle cruisers and space stations, in addition to infinite amounts of random industrial garbage.

The planet itself, when first discovered, was a rather interesting archeological find.

Nearly the entire surface of the planet was covered in vast, very modern looking cities that appeared only a few decades or so behind in technology than that of Corneria, and yet the cities were dated at being at least a hundred thousand years older. The planet and its cities were also completely abandoned and derelict, having been unused for an unknown amount of time. All that remained of the species that may have lived on Temple was the occasional fragment of bone or depictions of large owls found in various places around the planet. Since owls as a species had been extinct in the Lylat System for thousands of years themselves, it was heralded that Temple may very well have been the ancient home world of the owls. Why the cities were completely abandoned was a mystery that was never solved. The most popular theory was that the owls had gotten so advanced that they ended up creating a technology so powerful that they could not control it, and were somehow wiped out completely while the buildings themselves remained mostly intact.

As fewer and fewer useful evidence was found and the years passed by, the Cornerian government began to lose all interest in Temple, and instead turned the space around it into a galactic junkyard, receiving much praise from the citizens of the Lylat System as a whole for taking care of the dangerous problem of having massive sections of space junk and destroyed starships floating out in open space for any innocent ship to accidentally run into.

Soaring through space, darting lazily between large pieces of space junk was a single Space Dynamics R64 Arwing star fighter, being trailed far behind by a massive _Dreadnought_-class space cruiser, also manufactured by the Space Dynamics firm. On both sides of the half-mile long ship's sloping tail was the red silhouette of a curving fox with wings.

Up ahead of the _Great Fox_, inside the Arwing, Fox McCloud held the control stick of the star fighter with a measure of disinterest, his mind distant.

His green eyes wandered between the far-off, diamond-like stars, the gargantuan floating masses of downed starships and assorted space junk floating all around him like an asteroid field, and the sandy grayish brown planet looming far ahead. The metal headset that crowned the back of his head and held a green scouter over his eye felt slightly uncomfortable as he shifted back in his pilot's seat.

He had no real reason to be out here.

Fox had come to Temple simply because it seemed like a place to seclude himself, to retreat as far as possible from everything in his life. He felt a connection, a familiarity to the abandoned, hollowed-out nature of the dead ships around him and the dead planet in the distance. It was as good a place as any to get away.

"**Commander**" ROB-64's voice called over the comm. unit.

ROB had stopped calling him by his name a while ago, only serving to emphasize the cold, inhuman nature of the android. Fox never bothered to ask ROB why he never called him by his name anymore; he was long past the point of caring about it anyway.

"Yes?" Fox answered, speaking into his headset's microphone.

"**Sensors detect a cruiser-sized ship active in the area**," ROB coldly informed over the comm.

"Did it just drop out of warp?" Fox inquired in a bored tone.

"**Negative, Commander. Ship was inactive until recently. Previously indiscernible from the large specimens of debris in the area**," ROB answered.

"What's the ship's handle?" Fox asked flatly, already losing interest.

"**Unknown, Commander. Ship refuses to transmit any registry or cooperative telemetry data. Electromagnetic scan is impaired by surrounding obstacles. Visual confirmation impaired as well**," ROB informed.

"Probably a salvage crew or smugglers. Maybe space pirates. No difference to us," Fox answered.

"**Sensors detect the deployment of a single small-size personal ship. Probable star fighter**," ROB warned.

Fox's eyebrow rose and he sat forward in his seat, feeling the sides of the instrument panels brushing against his chest as he flexed his hands over the control stick.

The clear canopy of the Arwing felt just slightly suffocating as Fox scanned the area with his eyes.

The area around him was nothing but cold, dead space, his only company being the hulking, still masses of derelict star ships.

The inside of the cockpit felt frigid and silent as the surroundings yielded nothing.

Fox felt the red fur on his back bristle up slightly as his eyes narrowed.

"I'm opening a public comm. channel," Fox informed ROB as he punched in a broadcast code for the comlink.

"This is Arwing TSF-1, calling all ships in the area. Please respond for proper telemetry data," Fox said into his microphone, sighing his way through the proper jargon.

Fox opened the full reception channel, waiting for five minutes as cold, dead air served as his only response.

"Arwing TSF-1 to all ships in the area. Please respond. For both of our safety. We're not military. We just don't want to run into you guys, wherever you are," Fox replied with a roll of his eyes.

Again, there was only silence on the public channel.

The large skeleton of an old Venomian battleship loomed ahead, its rusty maroon color giving Fox a nostalgic feeling of the old days of Andross. Things were a bit simpler back then.

"**Proximity warning, Commander**," ROB informed him, "**Sensors detect single fighter ship approaching. Fighter is 200 kilometers and closing.**"

"Arwing TSF-1 to approaching star fighter," Fox called over the channel, growing insistent, "Respond with registry data and intentions immediately."

There was no answer to his request, and the space around him remained as still and as quiet as before as Fox's Arwing glided under the derelict Venomian battleship.

Fox's snout formed a vague frown as he grew ever more impatient.

"Listen," Fox warned, "Respond or I'm gonna take this as a threat. I'll consider you hostile and respond, and you REALLY don't want to be in a dogfight with me."

"**100 kilometers and closing, Commander**," ROB warned.

_Where IS he?,_ Fox thought as he locked the fighter's wings in attack position.

With a vague whine that echoed into the cockpit, the Arwing's wings slanted slightly backwards, locking the fighter into a lethal arrowhead shape.

The scouter on his headset lit up into a comprehensive heads-up display, complete with targeting computer.

The Arwing's lasers were fully charged, however there were no bombs loaded into the bomb magazine.

Fox hadn't figured on entering into a sortie when he'd taken off from the Great Fox this morning.

"**75 kilometers, Commander**," ROB informed.

"Goddammit," Fox growled.

If it wasn't for all of the damn junk everywhere, he'd be able to see the fighter by now.

"Your funeral, pal," Fox snarled into the microphone, his thumb poised over the red firing button.

"Great to see you, too, McCloud," a familiar rich, gruff voice with a distinctive drawl called over the comlink.

Fox's heart skipped a beat and his eyes went wide as he recognized the voice.

"Wolf?" Fox breathed.

At that moment, Fox heard a series of high-pitched hissing noises as a pair of red laser blasts seared across his canopy.

The hair-trigger pilot's reflexes kicked in and Fox yanked his control stick to the side in a hard barrel roll to the left.

The inertial compensators in the Arwing made it so Fox didn't even feel the inversion or the spinning as the fighter rolled.

As soon as he finished his barrel roll, a red black and white VenCom B-35 Wolfen star fighter roared past him. With the Wolfen's green engines leaving a verdant trail behind it as it sliced through space, Fox gripped onto the control stick and gunned the Arwing forward, sending the fighter soaring overtop a gutted grey Cornerian support ship in the hopes of gaining some cover.

Wolf O'Donnell.

Probably Fox's oldest surviving foe and one of the most dangerous. StarWolf had been a wild card at best, a sworn enemy at worst, ever since the Andross days.

"Falco, cover my back, I'll…" Fox began, and then trailed off abruptly.

For a second there, Fox completely forgot.

It took him a moment to adjust to the fact that he would be completely alone on this one.

"Wolf," Fox called over the comm., hoping to distract him a bit whilst he figured out a plan, "After all this time, why pick now to try and kill me?"

"Do I need a reason?" Wolf inquired with a chuckle, "Here I am in between contracts; here you are doing whatever. Seemed like a good idea to me."

Fox wrinkled his nose in disgust, scanning his radar display for Wolf's position and finding nothing.

The guy was a true psychopath.

"Where's all your friends at?" Wolf sneered, "Usually I've got all sorts of things coming out of the woodwork, like that annoying frog or the bird that won't shut up. Or that blue chick…what's her name?"

Fox didn't even have a response for that.

His radar beeped and showed a red blip approaching fast from behind, just as the Arwing was rocked with the impact of a jolting laser blast. The Wolfen screamed over the canopy, its four bladelike wings in attack position.

"C'mon, McCloud!" Wolf taunted, his voice crackling with a touch of static over the comm., "I'm falling asleep here. Do _some_thing!"

Fox gritted his teeth and choked the stick, shoving it downward into the direction that the Wolfen had previously flown.

The Arwing soared over the curvature of the Cornerian ship, catching the Wolfen as it curved into a broad upwards U-turn, its dorsal surface fully exposed.

"Very sloppy, Wolf," Fox lectured, stabbing his thumb into the red firing button and feeling a rush of adrenaline as the Arwing's lasers let off a hissing bark and fired twin blue laser blasts right at the ship.

The Wolfen pulled into a fast triple barrel roll that put it facing the Arwing head-on, speeding towards the fighter for a point-blank collision.

Fox called Wolf's bluff and throttled the Arwing up as far as it could go, hearing the engines roar as he was pushed back into his seat.

The two fighters sped towards each other in a stellar game of Chicken, unleashing a stream of red and blue laser fire.

The Arwing's shields took the blows, absorbing the red blasts of light with crackles of diffusing plasma.

Just as the distance readout on the heads-up-display read 200 meters, the Wolfen pulled up and inverted itself, roaring over top of Fox's Arwing practically canopy to canopy.

A stunned Fox looked up and for a split second he could actually see a glimpse of Wolf's blue bionic left eye glowing softly in the Wolfen's cockpit.

As the two ships blew past each other, Wolf's laughing voice could be heard over the comm.

"There you go, McCloud!!" Wolf mockingly encouraged, "That's the spirit I remember! Lets see how long it lasts…"

Fox glanced at the shield power readouts on the instrument panels and saw that the hits he had absorbed put the shields at 25 percent.

The Arwing couldn't take much more punishment.

With no less determination than before, Fox pulled up hard on the control stick and sent the Arwing into a vertical loop backwards, turning the fighter right side up as soon as the ship was completely reversed.

Fox scanned the radar, seeing the red blip at his four o'clock, glancing up and seeing his view blocked by what looked like the remainders of a military space station.

He throttled down and followed Wolf's trajectory based on the radar, flying over the space station's mighty shell.

Right as the Arwing zoomed over the curvature of the space station, Fox could see the Wolfen lancing through space below.

The Wolfen was slightly faster and had more powerful lasers than the Arwing; however it paled in comparison to the Arwing's maneuverability and shield power. If Fox's shields were depleted from that standoff, then Wolf's had to be just hovering above dead.

Fox sent the Arwing roaring over the space station, its lasers flashing twice. Fox then held the firing button down and heard the power levels whirr upwards as the lasers powered up for a fully-charged shot.

The Wolfen took off as Fox released the charged shot, unleashing a massive blast of blue hellfire that snaked after Wolf's fighter.

As Fox tore after him, Wolf's ship took off at full speed towards the burnt-out husk of a massive trading freighter, just barely outrunning the charged shot.

The Wolfen spun into another barrel roll to the right, scattering the laser blast as its shields flared. Fox scowled and throttled fully up, coming up right behind Wolf's fighter, close enough that the Arwing began to flail a bit in the wake of the Wolfen's green engines.

He punched into the fire button again and again, pounding Wolf's fighter with paired laser blasts and watching as the green hue of the Wolfen's shields began to grow fainter and fainter.

Maybe just a shot or so more…

With a jerking blast of green fire, the Wolfen's engines blazed and the ship leapt forward on a crash course for the freighter right in front of them. At the last moment, Fox saw the red cone of a smart bomb dart out of the Wolfen's magazine and impact the freighter, blossoming with a brilliant, encompassing flash of an explosion.

The freighter began to blow into two halves as the explosion just began to dissipate, and Fox's jaw dropped slightly as the Wolfen tore through the quickly widening gap, diving straight into the pluming fires of the explosion.

There was no other option. Fox was going too fast to slow down, and banking to either side would send him crashing into either half of the freighter.

His only option was to follow Wolf through the fire.

Fox dug his fingers into the stick so hard that it hurt, holding on as the Arwing sped through the firestorm, nothing visible except for the plasma flames enveloping the canopy.

The Arwing shook with turbulence that Fox felt right in his spine, making it difficult to hold onto the controls. With no warning at all, the Arwing suddenly punched through the flames and out to the other side, swooping over the brownish-grey northern hemisphere of Temple.

Fox first glanced to his shield readout and noticed that his shields were completely dead from the damage wrought by the explosion.

"Think fast, Fox," Wolf menaced over the comm.

Fox looked up to see the Wolfen a few hundred meters away, and a smart bomb sailing towards his Arwing with a malevolent red trail.

Fox gasped and jerked the stick to the right, spinning the Arwing into a barrel roll away, then pointing into a downwards nosedive. The smart bomb exploded in the position that the Arwing had occupied a half-second ago, the shockwave spreading out and viciously smacking the fighter with full force.

Fox's head was whip lashed into the back of his seat as the instrument panels sparked under the rending of metal.

The orange glow of the explosion filled the cockpit as Fox felt the lurching feeling of freefall downwards.

As the explosion cleared, all that Fox could see through the canopy was the grayish brown of Temple; all that he could hear was the panicked beeping of multiple alarms.

In the heads-up display was the warning message in red: 'WARNING: ATMOSPHERIC RE-ENTRY IMMINENT'

Fox began to breathe hard as he scrambled his hands over the instrument panel in order to find out just how much of the ship had been destroyed by the bomb.

He quickly punched in a request for the damage readout, and was quickly shown a schematic of the Arwing from the top looking down.

On the schematic, it showed the left wing traced out in red, and one of the gravity-diffusion generators in red as well.

One of the Arwing's wings had been completely blown off, and one of the G-diffusion generators was inoperable as well.

Atmospheric flight, by way of either gravity diffusion or by gliding with the shape of the Arwing itself, would be difficult if not impossible. It made re-entry especially dangerous. The Arwings were made for both spaceflight and atmospheric flight, and were thus shielded for re-entry, but it was still the most dangerous thing a pilot could do next to getting into a dogfight. Regardless of how shielded the Arwing might've been, the wrong re-entry position could still melt the fighter into a ball of molten slag.

The alarms kept wailing as Fox gripped the control stick, trying his best to shift the Arwing into a nosedive straight down, to best take advantage of the fighter's heavily-shielded nose, praying that the forward heat shields that absorbed the abuse of re-entry were still functional.

The Arwing began to wobble and swerve through the air uncontrollably as a fiery orange flare began to grow around the corners of the fighter, along with a loud roaring of rushing air that pounded into the canopy.

'WARNING: ATMOSPHERIC RE-ENTRY IMMINENT' the computer flashed repeatedly, 'ATMOSPHERIC RE-ENTRY IMMINENT'.

"I heard you the first time!" Fox snapped for no reason in particular.

The Arwing continued to wobble, thrashing Fox around in the cockpit enough that he knew he would be getting bruises. His real worry was getting a concussion and blacking out.

"ROB!" Fox yelled into the microphone, "I could use some help here!!"

The only response was static, and Fox realized that either the damage or the re-entry had to be raising hell with the comlink.

He couldn't even hear himself think over the deafening roar of the resistant atmosphere, and the glow from the superhot air around was enough that it was nearly blinding him even though Fox was looking straight down at the instrument panel.

The distinctive squeal of yet another alarm was heard, the one that Fox had feared hearing: the temperature alarm. It meant that the Arwing was within about a few hundred degrees of melting point. In a short while, the Arwing would begin to break apart.

It was plain and simple: Fox was going to die if he didn't get out of this horizontal spin.

With one of the G-diffusers shot and one wing missing, that might be impossible.

Fox's loss for what to do was turned into a panic as he felt the cockpit begin to heat up and heard the temperature alarm increase in tempo as the outside of the Arwing burned hotter and hotter.

A glance at the diagnostic panel showed that he had 12 percent engine power remaining, giving Fox a last-ditch idea.

If he couldn't guide the Arwing into a steady trajectory, perhaps he could _force_ it.

There was still enough engine power left for one large boost. If he timed it right, Fox could throttle all the way up and force the engines to give out one burst of speed with enough force to keep the Arwing on a straight path.

The only problem was that the Arwing's re-entry speed would increase about a few hundred kilometers per second more, which would put even more strain on the heat shielding. Not to mention the fact that it would make an actual landing even more difficult.

There was no time for hesitation, or even a deep amount of thought. Fox trusted his instincts and gripped the handle of the throttle, watching the artificial horizon readout as it spun in relation to the planet Temple below.

The split second came that Fox knew in his gut that the time was right, and he shoved the throttle forward with a grit of his teeth.

The engines gave off a blast that sounded more like an explosion than an acceleration, and Fox was once again shoved back into his seat as the wrecked Arwing leapt forward, however the first thing he noticed was that the spinning sensation was gone.

The orange flare of re-entry subsided a bit, confined instead to the tip of the Arwing's nose, which blazed red-hot.

The temperature alarms still sounded and Fox noticed with a small measure of distress that the damage readout was showing a slow deterioration to the nose, the added speed of the stabilizing boost creating too much heat resistance for the shielding to handle.

Fox prayed that it would hold; he still had more than his fair share of problems to worry about.

The altimeter was counting down almost too fast to see, and Fox could make out clouds below the Arwing. Gone now was the darkness of space, replaced by the daylight of Temple as the Arwing reached the mid-atmosphere.

With one wing gone, it would be a fight just to keep the Arwing on a straight path. And Fox still had to figure out how to slow down enough to avoid plowing into the ground at about 75 meters per second.

Up ahead, the nose was growing from red-hot to yellow.

Once more, the Arwing began to wobble and pitch as it lost speed.

Fox compensated the best he could, giving the control stick the slightest of nudges in response to the Arwing's tempestuous bucking. It was a constant battle of readjustment and correction, but Fox managed to get the hang of keeping the fighter pointed in one general direction.

As the Arwing sailed through a cloud on its fiery plunge, Fox was able to make out a vast, unmoving city with towering skyscrapers far below. He had perhaps a minute or two before he'd be within a few thousand feet of the ground and things got even harder.

Fox called up the damage readout again, ignoring the slowly continuing decay of the nose, and requested a full diagnostic on the remaining G-diffuser.

The diagnostic focused on the second, undamaged blue fin at the side of the Arwing's cockpit, showing that the G-diffuser was functional but quickly losing power, which was automatically being re-routed to the forward heat shields to prevent the nose from disintegrating.

Fox called up a list of the power distribution, quickly receiving a list of ship components with percentage markings. Since the second G-diffuser was off line, power was being rationed off to different parts of the ship to make up for the lack of energy. It wasn't enough, however, and across the board power levels were dropping.

Fox quickly scanned the list, trying to find a location from which he could divert power in order to get the G-diffuser as functional as possible. He'd need it to be in the best condition he could manage, or else the gravity brakes wouldn't work and he'd have no way to slow the Arwing's descent.

By now he'd completely tuned out the deafening growl of the rushing air outside, and the wailing of the alarms inside the cockpit. Fox was able to find some measure of focus.

He could divert all power away from weapons, but there was only a pitiful amount of juice remaining there. The only other source of available power that could possibly be sacrificed was the life support systems.

Careful to keep his hands on the control stick, Fox bashed the emergency panel to his right with his elbow, knocking loose the oxygen mask and air tank that was kept in case of a loss of life support.

In a split second motion, Fox took his right hand off of the control stick and pressed the mask to his mouth, fitting the plastic covering over his snout. He quickly grabbed onto the elastic band and stretched in order to keep the mask on his face, and frantically looped it over his head and let it snap securely over his headset. With a final movement, Fox pressed the button on the air tank to release the oxygen inside, and he breathed in a lungful of stale air as he selected both the weapons and life support and quickly diverted all power from both into the remaining G-diffuser.

He felt a cold feeling over his fur as the air rushing into the cockpit stopped, and everything inside seemed deathly still. Fox just tried to breathe calmly and carefully through the oxygen mask. On the power distribution list, the levels of the G-diffuser climbed up to 62 percent.

That was good enough for what he needed.

As the skyline of the city of Temple below grew closer and closer, Fox engaged the gravity brakes in full, and he felt a lurching scream as the brakes powered up and began to resist the blinding speeds of the Arwing's descent.

Fox felt his guts being scrambled by the opposing g-forces as the inertial compensators died with the rest of the life support.

Up on the nose of the Arwing, the flare of re-entry fires subsided and the surface began to change from orange to red as it cooled down.

Fox would've almost felt relieved if the ground wasn't so close right now.

With blinding speed, the Arwing sailed in between a pair of skyscrapers, blasting over row after row of lower buildings as it neared a massive central plaza.

That was as good a place as any to make a crash landing.

The buildings surrounding the Arwing flew by in a blinding blur, the ancient stone of the plaza coming up faster than Fox would've thought possible.

Fox pulled up on the control stick to make the softest landing he could, but forgot for a split second about the lost wing and the instability that its absence brought.

The Arwing dipped upwards slightly, doing a half barrel roll through the air so that its remaining wing was perpendicular to the ground. It then dived downwards, the wing being the first to hit the ground and absorbing most of the force of impact. The wing tore off like tissue paper, the metal screaming as it ripped.

Fox squinted his eyes shut as the wingless fighter spun through the air then came back down, skipping twice across the plaza like a stone across water, creating a storm of sparks and an opera of rending metal screeches.

The Arwing's wreckage came down one last time, smacking into the ground so hard that Fox's head was shaken like a rag doll, his head bashing into the back of his seat so hard that he could feel his headset crack.

The Arwing skidded along the stone, grinding to a sudden stop.

For a moment, Fox kept his eyes closed, only hearing the hissing and flowing of smoke and settling engine fluid as the alarms inside the cockpit still honked and buzzed.

With one final, large inhale, Fox tore the oxygen mask off his face and opened up his eyes, seeing through the soot covering the cracked canopy the trail of debris that the crash had left, including the scattered metal confetti that remained of the wing.

Fox then pressed the canopy release button, and to his surprise the hydraulics whirred and the canopy tranquilly lifted upward to allow him to exit. He half expected to have to blast the canopy off.

Clicking the small release lever in the safety harness, Fox felt a massive pain and a dizziness in his head as the assorted belts of the harness fell off of his shoulders and chest.

Fox stood up on the pilot's seat, carefully jumping off of the rim of the canopy, over the blue G-diffuser fin, and landing on the plaza's stone pavement. He was very cautious of how blazing hot the outside of the Arwing still had to be from re-entry.

His head was spinning at a million miles per hour, his feet still unaccustomed to being on solid ground.

Fox lifted himself up and stared around at the empty, quiet skyscrapers towering over him, their windows all vacant and dark.

Breathing heavily, Fox looked over to what remained of his beloved Arwing, seeing it scorched to the point that it was almost black, wingless and with the nose severely blunted and melted from the rough re-entry.

She would never fly again.

There was no question about that.

He didn't really care at this point, what with his brain feeling like it was being forced out through his nose. Fox put a hand to his forehead, brushing his nose, then brought it away to discover that his hand was smeared with blood. Fox felt his nose again, and his fingers came away with even more blood.

It wasn't just his head; Fox's entire body ached. His head just felt the worst.

Fox wiped the blood onto his jacket then stumbled back to the smoking Arwing wreckage, reaching back inside the emergency panel and pulled out a small cylindrical device with a red button on top. He promptly pressed the button, watching the button blink red periodically, and shoved the object into the breast pocket of his jacket. The emergency beacon would ensure that any passing friendly spacefarer would receive a distress signal. It would also let ROB know that he was still alive. Unfortunately, it was likely that Wolf also knew as well.

Fox glanced back up at the encroaching skyscrapers.

There was something eerie about how deathly still these abandoned buildings were. Almost like an entire city of ghosts, haunting the planet and going about their after lives, not even aware that they were dead. It made Fox feel very out of place, almost unwelcome, to be probably the only living thing within a hundred kilometers, if not on the entire planet.

Even if he was just barely alive at the moment.

As he gazed at the skyline above, something else caught his eye.

High above and in the distance, a flaming comet descended through the atmosphere above, trailing a tail of fire as it burned its way through the sky.

It took Fox a moment to realize that this was no shooting star: It was Wolf, likely following him close behind.

The ship would reach him, defenseless, in a matter of minutes.

Fox tried to run, to seek shelter in the nearest building, but only succeeded in stumbling and collapsing into the stone-paved ground.

He could practically feel the planet spinning below him.

As Fox picked himself up, he could feel the hot, rushing feeling of bile in the back of his throat. There was nothing he could do to fight it, and he promptly vomited into the ground.

His tongue burned with the harsh aftertaste of his own stomach acid, and Fox coughed as he wiped his mouth off.

Throwing up actually seemed to help just a bit.

Below the ringing sound in his ears, Fox could hear the hissing rumble of a flaming re-entry and the roar of an engine.

A look up showed the comet-like oncoming Wolfen getting ever closer.

Fox put his hands on his knees, steadying himself.

In the distance, the re-entry fires faded away from around the Wolfen, and Fox could just make out the sharp x-shape of the approaching star fighter. It caught the sun and glinted briefly as it screamed over the Temple skyline. It got closer and closer, darting in between the skyscrapers, until finally flashing into the plaza and unleashing a hail of red laser blasts that lanced over Fox's head and exploded into the Arwing's wreckage.

The heat and the shockwave hit Fox even from almost a hundred feet away, knocking him onto his side as the Wolfen swooped into the sky, flying far above and making a sharp turn to face the plaza once more.

He leapt to his feet as the star fighter bore down on the plaza, coming straight for him in a way that Fox knew he'd been seen.

His nerves were on a hair-trigger as the Wolfen zoomed out of the sky, closing the distance between itself and the edge of the plaza in milliseconds.

The lasers fired in rapid succession, and Fox took off running as fast as he could, darting towards the same direction that the Wolfen was headed.

It took some balls to run at the fighter instead of away, but that was the only way Fox could minimize the amount of time he'd appear on the target screen; Wolf would overtake him before he got too many shots off.

One of the laser blasts punched into the stone pavement just twenty feet from Fox, forming a massive circular crater and an explosion that launched Fox through the air and tossed him into the ground.

Fox landed in a heap as the Wolfen flashed overhead with a jarring sonic boom.

He looked up from the ground as the Wolfen came around for another pass, and instead of making an attack run Fox was surprised as the fighter dived lower and lower into the ground, gliding just barely a hundred feet over the streets between the buildings.

The Wolfen blasted over the streets and into the plaza almost too fast to be seen, pulling up just as it entered the edges of the plaza.

The canopy sprang up and a single figure leapt out of the fighter, landing hard on the ground with a slamming of feet as the Wolfen's autopilot flew the ship up to the roof of a nearby building.

The figure looked up at Fox from across the plaza, glaring at him with one narrow eye and one blue cybernetic optical implant.

Wolf O'Donnell rose up to full height, his pointed grey ears perking up and his rough tail slowly twitching. Even from here, Fox could see Wolf flexing those sharp claws of his.

They both stood still, simply staring at each other from across the plaza, silent and unmoving.

"It's a great day to die, ain't it, McCloud?" Wolf growled.

Fox didn't respond, only allowed his right hand to hover over his holstered blaster.

He saw Wolf's hand fly to his own holster, and Fox dived to the side as the blaster spit a glowing glob of green plasma in his direction.

The plasma bolt dashed over Fox's head and hit the wall of a building behind him, blasting a hole in the wall.

In a single, liquid movement, Fox yanked his blaster from its holster and swung it around to face Wolf, squeezing off three shots of crimson laser bolts that Wolf dodged with a leap into the air, running towards him with a determined charge.

Gripping onto the handle of his blaster, Fox ran in Wolf's direction, his heart beating in his chest.

At the risk of sounding speciesist, it can be said that wolves are the least evolved of all sentient beings in the Lylat System. Almost every wolf is dominated by some revenant, bestial impulse or compulsion, a leftover perhaps of the animal instincts that dictated behavior in the primal, savage world of eons ago. It is of little surprise, then, that wolves were among the most violent and rare of all beings in the galaxy, precisely because of the feral behavior that they frequently indulged and the lethal consequences that often resulted from such in a civilized galactic community. There exist only perhaps a handful of species naturally predisposed to beating a wolf in a fair fight. Foxes are not known to be one of them.

But then again, foxes are not known for fighting fair, either.

Fox closed the gap between Wolf and himself quickly, slapping his left hand to his waist, where the reflector device that Slippy had designed hung off of his belt loop. Fox pressed the button on the device just as he grabbed Wolf's wrist, and the reflector sparked to life in a glow of blue light.

Wolf cried out in anguish as the reflector's induction field shocked him with a wave of electricity, knocking him backwards as Fox fired off another shot from his blaster, hitting Wolf squarely in his metal shoulder plating.

Wolf lashed out with his left hand as he flew backwards, slashing at the sides of Fox's white jacket.

There was a tearing sound as a trio of claw-marks ripped into his jacket, causing Fox to leap back in surprise.

Fighting Wolf was sure to be tricky, especially with the spikes on his shoulder plates, the individual spike on each knee pad, and the sharpened claw on each finger.

Wolf hopped forward and jabbed, driving the heel of his palm into Fox's nose, sending him backwards with a grunt of pain. He clawed at Fox again, tearing his army green flight suit at the leg. Fox yelled, feeling the oozing of blood from the cuts in his leg that Wolf had inflicted.

Fox hopped forward and punched Wolf squarely in the jaw, eliciting a brief snarl from his archrival, then promptly grabbed Wolf's open, blue vest and kneed him in the gut, sending him backwards.

As Wolf stumbled, he yanked out his large blaster and swung at Fox wildly.

Fox moved his head just in time to dodge the wickedly curved blade that Wolf had mounted as a bayonet on the end of the pistol.

Wolf regained his balance and managed to fire off a shot, and Fox threw himself backwards as the green blast lanced over his head.

Fox landed on the ground and quickly leapt up as Wolf holstered the blaster and put his right hand behind his back, almost as if he was reaching for something.

Fox took aim with his blaster, firing off one, two, three, four, five more shots, watching as Wolf leapt from side to side to avoid them. The fifth shot hit Wolf on his left arm, and he let out a brief yelp of pain.

Fox's blaster was designed to be fired fast and to chip away at a person, almost unnoticeably, until they could be dealt with or avoided. He could charge it up for a killing shot, but he didn't really have time for that now.

Wolf rebounded and visibly crushed something in his hand, giving off a feral grin.

Fox leapt to his feet and rushed forwards, lashing out with his foot in a broad kick.

Wolf caught the kick with his hand, slapping it away and knocking Fox off balance. He then shoved forward and elbowed Fox in the gut, causing Fox to trip backwards.

As Fox attempted to regain his posture, he didn't realize how wide open he was.

In a blinding movement, Wolf raised his right hand and opened it up, blowing fiercely. A dull yellow powder flew from Wolf's hand and into Fox's face, sprinkling into his eyes and nose.

In his shock, Fox breathed in the dust, smelling a stale, almost flowery smell, squinting his eyes shut in panic as the powder stung his eyes.

There was a white hot pain as he was struck right between the eyes, and Fox screamed as he fell backwards.

He hit the ground in a heap, already noticing that something was wrong.

There was a sluggish, almost dizzying way that time seemed to slow down. It felt like it took five minutes for Fox to open his eyes.

He saw Wolf standing over him, his blaster aimed right at him. Everything seemed to be out of focus, like Fox was seeing double. The buildings behind Wolf were little but towering, malevolent shadows.

"It would be so easy, McCloud…" Wolf rumbled, his voice echoing weirdly in Fox's ears.

Wolf's body seemed to blur as he holstered his blaster with a crooked smile.

"Too easy. Hows 'bout we take a rain check on this thing, eh?" Wolf growled, "I think…I'll give you some time. Something tells me you'll be occupied, anyway. Do me a favor and try to stay alive in the meantime, alright? I'm gonna want to know what you see…"

Wolf's words were an odd, random soup of nonsense that Fox could barely process.

"Later, McCloud," Wolf chuckled, walking away.

Fox slowly blinked, for what seemed to take sixty seconds, and he could hear a faint slam as his eyelids smacked together. When he opened his eyes again, Wolf was completely gone.

If his head was spinning before, it was flying out of control now. It was totally different. He didn't know if he was lying down or standing up. He didn't know if Wolf had been gone for five minutes or five hours. The sun seemed to flicker on and off like a light, switching between night and day in a stuttering, irregular pattern.

He could barely remember who he was.

Where was he?

Was this Corneria?

Where were all the people? Was everyone dead?

Was he dead?

Fox might've been walking, but it was more like walking in a dream. He didn't remember getting up. He blacked in and out of consciousness, awaking each time in a different place. The ground under his feet seemed to change from stone to carpet to metal and back again.

The next moment that Fox regained some semblance of alertness, he was walking through a dark, grey-colored hallway. The cherry carpets on the floor looked like dried blood, and they distracted him from the window that overlooked the plaza he'd previously occupied.

Fox glanced outside slothfully, barely recognizing what looked like the exploded wreckage of his Arwing. Was he 3 floors up, or was it more like 20? The distance between the ground and Fox seemed to change each time.

He continued down the hallway, his feet sloshing on the carpet, his feet sinking in a little more than they should've.

Fox looked down and saw the feet of his boots soaked in a dark red, and realized that the entire hallway carpet was drenched in blood.

He stumbled backwards in shock and gasped, following the hallway up to the end, where a pair of round bodies laid on top of each other, their mouths wide open in a silent scream. Mirroring their gaping mouths, both figures throats and stomachs were slashed open viciously, wide agape like secondary and tertiary mouths of their own. The slash marks on their necks were dark and rimmed with crimson, like the painted lips of a seductive femme fatale. Spilling out from their stomachs like fat, phallic snakes were the coils of brown and pink intestines.

The two dead bodies were frogs, and Fox felt his heart rise up into his throat with terror and dread as he realized that he knew these people.

It was Slippy and Amanda.

Fox tried to breathe but found no air available, tried to move but found his limbs paralyzed.

Slippy's bulbous eyes stared out blankly down the hall at Fox, regarding him with a type of frozen terror and sadness. Amanda's dead, glassy eyes were locked solely on Slippy.

Fox's jaw tilted open in a look of silent shock, feeling a merciful intake of air. There was no way to make sense of it, even though the idea of the two of them dead and on this forsaken planet was ludicrous. There was only desperation, for there they were, gutted and stone dead, before his very eyes.

"Slippy…" Fox moaned softly, then took off running for his long time friend, screaming, "SLIPPY!!"

Fox nearly slipped on the blood-drenched carpet as he barreled for the two dead toads, devastation seizing both his head and his heart.

Fox cried out as he got close enough to smell the horrible, putrid stench of their rotting flesh, then tripped over his own feet and landed squarely on his chest.

"Slippy!" Fox cried out once more, looking up, then freezing in shock.

The two dead bodies were no longer there. The carpet, saturated with blood, was completely dry now, having returned to its ominous cherry color. There wasn't a drop of blood anywhere on his clothes, either.

Fox looked around the hallway, as if the bodies had moved, his jaw trembling in the remnants of confusion and devastation.

What the hell was that?

They had been right there. Fox had smelled their stench, he'd felt the wetness of their blood soaking his clothes. He'd seen their twisted faces.

And now it was as if they simply weren't. Had Slippy abandoned him even in death?

No, no that just wasn't possible.

Had he merely seen things? To see something so vivid, to have it dominate all five senses, it made him question which was the mirage; their presence or their absence.

Fox carefully picked himself up, his head still throbbing. His skull and limbs were so heavy, it was like walking underwater.

He took a step forward, only to stumble across the carpet and onto a flat door of taupe colored stone. Fox groped around the doorframe, pressing a small, faintly glowing panel to his left. The door slid up into the ceiling with a hiss. Fox staggered through the door into a dark, ancient-looking bedroom. Low to the floor was a rectangular, pit-like bed, dominating the small room. A pair of tattered, old curtains cast selective patterns of light around regions of the room, allowing only enough light to make the room just barely visible. The red carpeted floors were covered with dust and pieces of antique parchment strewn about the floor.

The entire room looked as if it had been either hastily evacuated or thoroughly vandalized.

It wasn't the most inviting place, but Fox could not deny the inviting, seductive nature of the bed before him. Hopefully, some sleep would put an end to this disorienting, trance-like state that he seemed to be in.

He couldn't be feeling this way just because of the crash. It had to be something else, but…but what had happened after the crash? The earliest thing he remembered was the Arwing skidding roughly across the plaza.

He definitely needed sleep.

Without the slightest measure of decorum or examination, Fox threw himself on the bed, collapsing into the soft mattress and it's odd, silky purplish-blue sheets. The sheets felt smothering, enveloping, almost malevolently so. They reminded him of Krystal.

Fox blinked his eyes only once, but in a blink of an eye he was somewhere completely different. He was standing up rather than lying down, and instead of the warm embrace of the deserted bed, he was in the grayish white, pristine and almost sterile chilliness of the Great Fox. Disoriented, Fox glanced around at the corridor surrounding him. He couldn't help the feeling that he was being watched, which was odd given the very white and lit-up nature of the corridor.

"Why, Fox?" a tender, sophisticated voice said from behind him.

Fox whipped around to face the voice's owner, and his heart halted in astonishment.

Those aqua-colored eyes of hers bore through him like a blade of ice, almost as if she could read his mind. In a broad sense of the word, it was highly likely that she was reading his mind at that very moment.

Krystal looked almost exactly like he'd remembered her, leaning with her back against the wall right next to the door to Fox's quarters. Her skintight indigo cat suit left only slightly more to the imagination than the bikini-loincloth outfit she had worn when they first met on Sauria. Her sensually-shaped face had the capacity for both pure innocence and carnal depravity. Krystal's lips and the practically perfect curves of her athletic body held the promise of a night to remember.

The only detail that seemed to be different was the areas around her eyes, which were darkened into nearly black, thin circles, as if she was constantly glaring or never slept. They gave her a vaguely enraged or malevolent look. Fox barely noticed it, moonstruck by her presence after so long of doing without her.

"Krystal…" Fox breathed, his jaw slack at the joyful illogicality of it all, completely disregarding how this could all be possible.

There was no sympathy or tenderness in her eyes, which looked about as soft as diamonds.

"I loved you," Krystal fumed.

"I love you, too," Fox sighed emotively, reaching to stroke her face.

"You sent me away," Krystal menaced, glaring venomously at his hand, as if daring him to touch her.

Fox paused and recoiled slowly, closing his eyes mournfully. He opened them again and felt a lump forming in his throat. He could feel her presence inside his head, barely perceivable like a shadow passing over the sun. Krystal had looked into his mind in a completely different way back when they were together. Before, it was a euphoric feeling, as if her very essence was inside of him and he was inside of her. Whenever she did it during sex, it was a torrid, raw, inflaming, frenzied type of catharsis unrivaled by anything Fox had ever felt, or ever would feel save for the next time.

Now, as Krystal looked into his thoughts, almost hypnotizing him with those eyes of hers, it was a total paralysis. There was no stimulus, or mutual exchange at any level, at any part of his body. He wasn't sure if he was even breathing anymore. If Krystal had stabbed him in the chest at that moment, Fox wouldn't have felt it. The only sensation that he experienced at all was a vague feeling of unease or eeriness as a spectral presence sifted through his thoughts, memories, fantasies and emotions like a stalker with a recently-pilfered diary of life secrets.

Somehow, Fox found the strength to speak.

"I'm sorry," Fox murmured.

Krystal's eyes narrowed, as if Fox had uttered a crass insult. He felt life returning to his body as Krystal released her mental grip and smiled at him acidly in a condescending way that he was taken quite aback.

"I just… I didn't want to see you hurt. I didn't want to lose you," Fox pleaded.

"That's what happened anyway," Krystal snarled.

Fox had imagined it like this in his mind several times.

Trying to somehow defend his actions, to justify what he did as Krystal skewered his heart and put it on trial.

Except now, it was even worse. Now it was real, wasn't it?

"You didn't care about me, Fox," Krystal hissed, "All that you cared about was not having to deal with it, if something did happen. I knew the risks. I took them. And you were fine with that, just as long as you didn't have to confront the possibility of losing me. If you'd rather push me away than lose me, it's because you're the one that was scared of being hurt. I never entered into the equation."

"No, I…" Fox trailed off.

Again, he felt the total lack of feeling; that infinite emptiness that seized him as Krystal gazed into his thoughts.

"At least have the fortitude to admit it. You cared more about getting hurt and losing me than you cared about me as a person. It was doomed from the start," Krystal interrogated.

Fox closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, unable to look at her.

"Yes," Fox whispered.

He felt the rushing feeling of relief as Krystal released him.

When he opened his eyes, he saw her much closer to his face. Some of the hostility seemed to be gone, but there was still a savage, unfamiliar air about her.

Fox was afraid to move. He felt naked, exposed, helpless.

When she put her hands around his neck, Fox almost drew back.

"Do you know what it's like to watch your home world destroyed? To know that every one you knew and loved was dead? And then, living with the guilt that you survived?" Krystal whispered in his ear, "And then, once you've forgiven yourself and opened your heart again, and found a new family, can you imagine being cut off and abandoned, again, except this time it's by the very person you'd loved? There's a walk in my shoes, Fox. You lost your father. I lost an entire world. And then I lost you. Who's got more of an excuse here?"

Fox closed his eyes again.

Part of him wanted to never let her go after losing her once.

The other part just wanted her to go away, for ripping away and exposing those awful truths he wouldn't even admit to himself.

"I know what's in your heart, Fox," Krystal breathed seductively into his ear, "I know what you want. Take it. Remember how it felt? Remember how I felt?"

She pulled back and looked hard and deep at him, those aqua eyes of hers looking less and less like the Krystal he remembered by the moment.

As much as he might've wanted to do everything to her that he'd been missing for the almost ten months she'd been gone, something inside Fox was telling him that this succubus before him was dangerous.

Before he could act, Krystal shoved her face into his, locking lips with Fox.

He considered backing away, maybe even running away, until he felt Krystal's tongue slip into his mouth. She tasted exactly the way he remembered her, almost like licking the ends of a plasma battery, except it was an enslaving sensation rather than painful.

Fox returned the action, grabbing Krystal around the waist, pulling her closer and forcing his tongue into her mouth, sliding it around the back of her tongue and just behind her teeth. He felt her breathing increase as she pressed up against his chest, and he shoved her roughly against the wall. Krystal's hands came down from around his neck and traveled down Fox's chest, her fingernails raking into him just a little too hard. Her hands worked their way back up, each one digging into the shoulders of his jacket. Fox took the hint and slipped each arm out of the sleeve, allowing the jacket to fall to the floor in a heap, exposing the sleeveless top of his dark green flight suit.

As Krystal went to work on untying the red scarf around his neck, Fox's hands traveled down Krystal's firm back and reached the edge of her buttocks, gripping the base of her tail and giving a light but firm tug.

Krystal gasped and dug her fingernails into his neck, while the tip of Fox's tongue worked its way from the back of the roof of Krystal's mouth to the front.

As Fox's hand moved from Krystal's ass to her upper thigh, Krystal responded by promptly wrapping her leg around Fox's waist. Just as Fox's hand moved to the front of her thigh and began to travel back up to her torso, Krystal pulled back a little, gripping Fox's bottom lip in her teeth. She proceeded to suck on his lip, digging her teeth lightly into his flesh to the point that the pleasure had tinge of pain to it. Just as Fox was about to make another move, Krystal opened her mouth and fully locked lips with him again. By now, Fox's scarf had been untied and fallen to the ground, and Krystal's hands were moving over his shoulders and down his arms, tracing her fingers firmly over the muscles under his fur.

Fox's hands moved up Krystal's stomach and to her chest, his forefinger and thumb scooping under the edges of her breasts. At that moment, Krystal broke off from Fox's mouth and put her lips to his ear, placing a hand firmly on the back of his head.

"Cut the foreplay and get to it," Krystal growled in a husky tone, sensuously licking the inside of his ear.

Fox didn't require any more encouragement than that, his hands snaking up her body and getting to the neck of her cat suit, fumbling with the clasp that would unfasten Krystal's clothes and allow her to just slip out of the cat suit.

With a quiet snap, the clasp unfastened, and Fox grabbed a handful of the cat suit covering Krystal's shoulders, dragging the fabric down off of her arms and fully exposing her neck, cleavage, and shoulders. Fox promptly shoved his face into her shoulders, running his tongue over her fur and stimulating her neck with a series of slow, passionate kisses. He could feel the sensation as Krystal's fur stood on end and she let out a low moan, digging her fingers into the back of Fox's head. As he nibbled softly into her neck, he began to notice just how hot Krystal was—temperature-wise.

First beginning to ignore it, Fox began to move lower, working his way down to her cleavage, where Krystal felt almost uncomfortably hot. Not about to let something so minor deter him, Fox worked his way back up her neck whilst dragging her loose cat suit further down her body, nearly exposing her breasts. Her neck was just as hot as her chest felt, and it was getting hotter—much hotter.

It was to the point where it irritated Fox's tongue to continue caressing her neck, and he pulled back with a level of confusion.

"What's wrong?" Krystal asked in a low tone, her breath short.

Before he could answer, she slammed her mouth into his and rammed her tongue down his throat. For perhaps the first moment or so, it was fine.

But afterwards, he felt Krystal heating up more and more, her tongue rising in temperature to the point that it almost hurt when she pressed it to one part of his mouth for too long. As Fox began to step back, Krystal stepped forward, shoving him backwards and pinning him to the other side of the hallway. Her lips were beginning to burn him; her tongue was like an overdone baked potato in his mouth.

Fox's breathing increased dramatically as he tried to push Krystal away, but found himself unable to make her budge.

Fox tried to grab Krystal's exposed shoulder, only to let out a muffled cry of pain as the flesh of his palms sizzled against her fur. No matter what, he could not dislodge her as she locked him in her incendiary kiss.

A distinct, low crackling sound could be heard as Fox noticed out of the corner of his eye the flesh on Krystal's shoulders beginning to sizzle and fry, bubbling in massive red welts and steam. He could smell the stench of her burning flesh. Still, Krystal continued to kiss him, oblivious to the fact that she was roasting.

Fox's heart was beating a million miles a minute as Krystal's tongue grew white hot and he felt it burning the back of his throat. He let out a scream of pain as the heat spread throughout him and enveloped him, cooking him from the inside out. The scream only came out as a muffled bleat of alarm, as Krystal's lips were blocking his.

His entire body was on fire, or at least it felt like it. Fox could feel every inch of his skin scorching and sizzling, growing hotter and hotter and hotter every second.

Fox pushed back against Krystal with all of his strength, trying to break free and escape.

Her only response was a moan of ecstasy, as if she didn't even notice it, and she held him with a cast-iron grip that would not even budge.

Fox began to helplessly spasm, his entire body convulsing as his blood boiled inside his veins. He could see the scalds and welts forming on his arms, popping up like parasites coming out of the ground.

Fox's eyes were being forced out of his head, and suddenly millions of tiny needles of pain began to press into his eyes as the moisture in his tear ducts began to boil, cooking his eyes like eggs.

Fox couldn't scream any more- his throat had been cauterized shut by the burning heat of Krystal's tongue traveling down his esophagus. He couldn't breathe, and that only made him panic more and struggle harder, which only seemed to make Krystal kiss him deeper with her searing flesh. Suddenly, Krystal's tongue withdrew, and she pulled away ever so slightly, gazing into his now blood-red, boiling eyes as steam began to waft from his tear ducts, indifferent to his suffering. A single hand grasped Fox's jaw in a stone-like grip; the other traveled down, in between his legs and fondled his genitals through his flight suit, searing his reproductive organs with fingers hot enough to start a fire.

"Do you love me now?" Krystal whispered softly to him, then kissed him again.

Fox felt Krystal's lips growing exponentially hotter to the point where he could feel his skin beginning to char, so hot that his body couldn't quite comprehend it anymore.

Krystal then gave a deep, orgasmic moan, and there was the whooshing growl as her back caught on fire.

She had no reaction, no response as the fire spread to every inch of her body, the flames consuming her until there was no part of Krystal still visible. The flames spread to Fox's body, and he writhed in agony, screaming as loud as he could as his fur burnt away in seconds, then as flesh turned black and shriveled. Fox's skin fell away like burnt paper, and all that he could do was scream as loud as he possibly could until it felt like his lungs were bleeding.

By now his skin and nerves were completely burned away, and Fox received a strange sensation as he felt nothing in contrast to the excruciating pain of mere moments ago. It was blissful to just feel nothing after so much agony, and Fox closed his eyes and surrendered, letting the flames consume him like a warm blanket.

There was only darkness and silence for a second, and Fox reflexively opened his eyes.

Initially surprised that he still had eyelids, Fox was further shocked to find himself lying in the tangled, purplish-blue blankets of the bed he'd collapsed into, seemingly so long ago. His clothes and the sheets were drenched in a deluge of cold sweat, and Fox breathed hard, feeling each part of his body, confirming that it was still very intact and not burned away.

A shroud of bewilderment and confusion sank over him, and Fox held his head in his hands as he desperately tried to make sense of it all.

What was happening to him?

The things he had seen were too real to be a nightmare, but far too nightmarish to be real. How did he know what was real if everything felt so real?

And why was he being tortured with these horrible images of all the people that he once knew and loved?

They had all left him, given up on him or not helped him enough in order to get back to normal after Krystal. That was it, right?

They had to have abandoned him.

There was no way he would condemn himself to a lonely hell like this.

Why was he seeing them so much?

Still breathing hard, his red fur matted with his own cold sweat, Fox threw the covers off of himself and crawled out of the bed, collapsing weakly onto the floor on all fours. He shivered in desperation, wrought on by incomprehension of just what the hell was happening to him.

Fox tried to stop his body from shivering, noticing that, now at least his head seemed to be clearing up a bit. He shuddered once and put his forehead down on the floor, trying to think back and maybe figure out what might be going on.

How had he gotten here? He knew that the Arwing had crashed, but he couldn't remember why. All that Fox could remember was the actual crash itself; how he had managed to fly the damaged Arwing in such a manner that he survived the crash was a mystery to him.

Had he hit his head? Is that why he was seeing all of these things?

No, if he had suffered that bad of a concussion, he probably wouldn't have been conscious for hours, let alone be able to move.

Fox began to crawl weakly across the room, noticing a dim, tiled room connected to the bedroom. Most likely a bathroom, which he could really use right now.

It wasn't so much that he had to go, but he so feared the idea of sleeping in a bed after the dream or whatever it was about Krystal.

He made his way to the bathroom, crawling along on his elbows roughly. He reached the tile and dragged himself along, feeling the cold, hard surface on his fur and skin. It was almost pitch black in the bathroom, and Fox couldn't find a light switch anywhere. The unfriendly surface of the floor was unforgiving to Fox as he gathered his feet up and put his hands around his knees, sitting in the darkness.

Fox squeezed his eyes shut and tried to shake the cobwebs out of his head. He only got an excruciating wave of pain that felt like his brain was sloshing around in his skull. Fox opened his eyes and noticed that the bathroom appeared to be getting lighter.

It was then that Fox realized that he was no longer in the bathroom.

The ground and walls were cold and hard, just like the bathroom had been, however the surface was black rather than the bathroom's light grey. The only door appeared to be a very heavy durasteel containment door without a handle on Fox's side. Also, he noticed that he was sharing the room with someone. Across the room, crouched on the black tile floor, a pitiful figure stared down at the ground. His clothes were tattered, and the arm of his white coat had scorch marks on them. The first thing that Fox noticed were the creature's ears: long and standing straight up, it was quite obvious that the figure was a rabbit.

Fox then looked closer at the figure, thin from partial starvation and it dawned on him that he would've recognized those grey and white markings anywhere.

It was Peppy.

But what the hell was he doing in here?

And why did he look better than he had in years?

The sound of approaching footsteps caused Peppy to look up with a visage of fear. His ears trembled a bit.

Peppy didn't appear to see Fox at all.

Fox's confusion was broken as the locks on the durasteel door snapped open and an ape in a maroon military uniform walked into the cell brandishing a blaster pistol.

His lungs were petrified as he found himself unable to breathe.

Of course.

Maroon military fatigues. A young-looking Peppy in a jail cell.

Somehow, he was on Venom.

And Peppy was a prisoner after Pigma Dengar betrayed him and James McCloud to Andross.

For weeks after he'd been informed as a kid that his father had been murdered, Fox had suffered violent, detailed nightmares of his father's death at the hands of Andross' torture experts.

He had never given too much thought to Peppy, who had the added trauma of surviving it and having to pick up the pieces.

"I don't know anything…I told you before. Pigma knows everything I know, and he works for you now, so just ask him," Peppy pleaded in his raspy voice to the ape soldier that stood over him, "Please, just don't take me back there again."

The ape soldier's simian mouth curled into a cheap, vulgar smile.

"Who said we weren't gonna torture you if you told us stuff?" the soldier sneered, "Now, there's just no reason to hold back, since you don't know anything."

A pitiful look spread over Peppy's eyes, and his ears drooped as his lips trembled.

"Please…" Peppy sobbed, "Please don't take me back there again. Please, just kill me if you want to, but don't take me back there."

The ape soldier's lip curled in contempt.

"Get up, you fucking pussy!" the soldier roared, kicking Peppy hard in the leg.

Peppy only wept.

"Please…" Peppy begged, tears streaming from his eyes, "I don't think I can feel anything anymore…"

"Then we'll really have to go to work on you," the soldier smirked, "Gotta make sure you feel it, then."

Peppy gritted his teeth and looked at the soldier with a mixture of weakness and scorn.

"Why are all of you doing this…?" Peppy croaked out.

"Because we can, bunny rabbit. Now get the fuck up!!" the ape roared.

Peppy tried to stand, only to be harshly elbowed in the gut by the soldier, who then grabbed Peppy's arm and began to drag him through the cell door.

Fox tried to tune it out and ignore it, but he could hear the scraping of Peppy's feet getting dragged across the black tile, and he could hear Peppy's sobs all the way down the hallway.

Then there was silence.

Fox prayed that he would wake up, that the dream would just end, but the hard cell walls and floor remained where they were.

Then he heard the screams.

They were loud enough that they sounded like the person making them was in the cell with Fox, sitting right next to him.

Fox knew that they were Peppy's screams, and the shrill sounds penetrated his very core, to the point that Fox tried to cover his ears and block them out, but he still heard them just as clear as ever.

They continued for what felt like hours, never ending, pausing only occasionally.

Fox grinded his teeth together as he felt his stomach churn and he put his head in his hands. Peppy continued to scream, and then Fox heard what sounded like begs for mercy. The begging was never answered, because the only thing that always followed was another scream.

Finally, there was one last, pathetic rattle of a whimper, and the halls fell silent.

Fox closed his eyes and put his head back against the wall.

When he opened them again, he was back in the bathroom.

Rather than being relieved that, in the end, it was just something he saw, Fox felt even worse, because he could still hear Peppy's screams in his head.

Fox hadn't noticed, but he'd been crying the entire time.

* * *

To be continued...

Please review. The more people review, the faster I'll come out with the next chapter. -TU


	2. Act Two: The Lone Wolf

Wow. I have to say that all of your generous reviews truly surprised me, and that they are the primary reason that you've gotten this chapter so quickly. Keep it up, and you'll see the third part to this story out even quicker. Alrighty, so, here is the middle chapter in this little trilogy, which, unlike the other parts of the story, takes place from Wolf's point of view rather than Fox's. Wolf is essentially the Boba Fett to Fox's Han Solo, so I tried to make him as cool and developed as I could in this rather adult take on StarFox. In this chapter, you'll see a bunch of things, such as just how much ass ROB (and Wolf) can kick, as well as how, in some ways, Wolf is just as alone as Fox in this story. Enjoy -Tobias Umbra

* * *

_Every wolf's got his vice. My mom's was food. Damn, she was fat as a house. My Daddy's was sex. He's the reason I had so many brothers and sisters. I stopped remembering all their names after Daddy started naming them after cities and types 'a kitchen appliances. You might ask yourself, how's a wolf end up with a name as trite as, well, " Wolf"? Lets just say, when you're the middle child in a family 'a twenty-six, you get shit on in all sorts 'a ways, the least of all bein' the originality of your name. But I digress. My vice is fightin'. Always has been. It's why, out of the twenty-five brothers and sisters I had, only twenty-one made it to adulthood. I didn't kill 'em on purpose, though. _

_Honest. _

_Corneria says I'm maniac and a murderer, but that's a load of horseshit. I don't _try_ to kill people. It's just that it kinda comes with the territory. I fight hard because it's the best rush you can get. It's better than sex or gambling or booze or any drug in the galaxy (trust me, I tried them all). It aint' my fault that the people that fight me sometimes end up hurt or killed. They took that risk when they made up their minds to start fightin'. I don't make an effort to make sure that they're dead, just to make sure they don't get back up and ask for seconds. _

_Even when I'm flyin', I always give people a chance to run. I'm not like Leon; chasin' 'em down and jerkin' 'em around all just to kill 'em. I'll only shoot at 'em as long as they're shootin' at me. I don't try to kill 'em, it's just the consequences of getting into a space battle are pretty lethal for the most part. If I'm _paid_ to kill someone, then I'll do it 'cause I hafta. It's just business at that point, nothin' personal. I think there's little that you can get done by killin' someone that you can't get done by knockin' them out. Every now and then, there's an exception or two, but by and large I do my best not to kill people. There's no re-match if they're dead._

_Now, McCloud, on the other hand…McCloud's an exception. There's a couple 'a reasons for it. First off, there's that whole issue with his daddy that he holds against me. That just pisses me off, 'cause that just ain't true. The truth is, when I was a pup, I thought StarFox was the dream life. It's why I started up StarWolf, 'cause I just wanted my own taste 'a adventure. It was just me an' Leon back then; we were young, an' we needed money, so when this fella' by the name of Andross comes along an' offers us a job, we told him yes. He was the one that forced me to take on Pigma and that candy-ass nephew 'a his, Andrew, as part 'a StarWolf. He made me watch what they did to James McCloud. _

_And I hated watchin' it, 'cause that was almost like my hero right there. Then McCloud's got the brass balls to say that I had somethin' to do with it. That's a big touch 'a disrespect, there. _

_Next, it's just that whole 'him vs. me' thing. I flew for Andross 'cause it was a job. It's not like I believed in the shit he was tryin' to do. McCloud flew for Corneria 'cause it was a job. He wouldn't 'a done it if he wasn't getting paid. And yet, he's a hero and I'm a murderer, just because of the sides we were on. Yeah, I'll admit, I got a past as an outlaw. It's why Corneria wouldn't hire StarWolf. They never gave us the chance. They treat us like criminals, how do they expect us to turn out? McCloud had all 'a them things that I had to deal without. And for them to be sayin' that I've only done bad things an' that he's only done good, well that pisses me off, too. _

_Finally, theres another reason that's gonna have to stay between us. I hate to say it, but McCloud's better than me. And the real thing that crosses me is that he _knows_ it. As long as McCloud's alive, I'm always gonna be number two. _

_Which is why McCloud has gotta die. It's why I've gotta kill him, and it's why I gotta make it good. _

_Every wolf's got his vice. And mine's fightin'. _

_And it won't be satisfied until I got a fight to the death, with him. _

* * *

The sun peeked low over the horizon, a passionate crimson color that set fire to the skies over Temple as it began to hand over dominion to the twin moons that hovered with ghostly stillness in the clouds above. With the abandoned cityscapes of Temple completely still and silent, an observer could almost see the sun in motion as it sank further and further out of sight. Though the surreal, almost picturesque view out the window would've captivated almost anyone else, Wolf O'Donnell could hardly care less.

Sitting on a barstool, hunched over a worktable with a cornucopia of assorted wires, screws and other tiny bits of metal, Wolf's gaze was locked onto the project before him. In his right hand, he delicately held an arc-soldering prod, gripping it like an artist would a paintbrush.

Through his one remaining eye, Wolf stared down at the flashlight-sized metal cylinder on the table before him; it's covering opened to expose several layers of complex circuitry. Through his optical implant, Wolf looked at the cylinder as well, however digitally drawn over it was a set of schematics, and everything seemed to have just a vaguely blue tint.

Wolf's implant proved so useful that part of him was glad to have lost his eye. The implant helped him with targeting and provided a heads-up display whilst he was flying his Wolfen, it functioned as a video communication channel without the need for carrying a comlink, it could digitally magnify anything he saw up to twenty times normal magnification, and it could also see in the infrared spectrum.

With the schematics constantly in one eye, Wolf carefully prodded a final part of the cylinder's circuitry, the arc-soldering prod emitting a vague crackle and a spark as it forged a pair of tiny circuits together. Wolf promptly set the prod down and plucked up the covering for the cylinder, putting it over the circuits that he'd just worked on and patiently tightening the bolts by inserting the tip of one of his claws into the screw heads and twisting carefully.

As soon as every part was fastened, the schematics display on Wolf's implant faded away as he straightened his back. Pointing the end of the cylinder away from him, Wolf thumbed a small button on the side of the cylinder, listening as the metal stick hummed to life.

Suddenly, a four-foot long blade of glowing blue plasma grew out from one end of the cylinder, crackling with energy as the internal magnetic field stabilized it. The plasma blade was energized enough to cut through just about anything.

Wolf's father had taught him how to make a plasma cutter, and the basics of electronics in general. Wolf had taught himself how to turn a plasma cutter into a plasma _sword_, as well as how to build other things that his father hadn't taught him. Wolf could build bombs, hack electronic locks, and even repair his Wolfen on the fly if the situation called for it. It may have been the nerdiest of all of Wolf's skills, but it was also one of the most useful.

With a faint smile of pride, Wolf pressed the activation button again and watched as the plasma blade disintegrated.

He calmly set the deactivated plasma sword down on the worktable, next to the other plasma sword he'd completed previously, and arched backwards, giving off a growl of pleasure as his back cracked. He'd been working on both of these nearly all day.

A look around the room revealed a rather sparse but clean den, made up of a portable computer, the workstation he was sitting at and a bare mattress lying on the floor. A set of stairs against the wall led up to the roof, where his Wolfen lay inactive.

The planet of Temple was a well-known hideout for people that didn't want to be found, and though Wolf was sure that he was the only person for perhaps twenty kilometers (except for Fox McCloud, of course), he was equally sure that there were probably hundreds of others taking refuge in the abandoned cities of Temple for one reason or another. Wolf didn't make a habit of coming to Temple often; really because he didn't feel the need to, however he'd made an exception in this case. The rumors had said that Fox McCloud could be found wandering around Temple's orbital garbage fields, and contrary to what Wolf had told his adversary, he'd actually been intending to challenge Fox for a while. If what they said was true, that Team StarFox had disbanded, then Wolf could finally challenge Fox one-on-one without any of his friends interfering.

There was a beeping in his ear as an orange dot appeared in the lower left corner of the heads-up-display of his implant.

The dot was a symbol that he had an incoming transmission.

"Accept transmission", Wolf said aloud, his implant recognizing his voice and initiating the communications channel.

The orange dot in his HUD expanded into a small digital window, in which a green skinned reptile with a triangular head and bulbous eyes stared out at him with a vague amount of coldness.

"Hey, Leon," Wolf said with a tired smirk.

"Wolf," Leon Powalski greeted in his manic, high-pitched voice, "How are things going down there?"

Since Wolf wanted his fight with Fox to be one-on-one in the strictest sense, he had asked Leon and Panther to remain on StarWolf's mother ship, the VenCom _Nostromo_-class space cruiser _Lone Wolf_. Panther had been all too happy to remain on the ship and laze about.

Leon wanted to come, and it had taken a while to make him stay out of it all.

Even then, he was constantly calling to check up.

"Things are just fine, Leon," Wolf growled with a roll of his eye, "You've got nothin' to worry about. You're not even missin' anythin'. Just got finished up buildin' the plasma swords."

"How's the Dalianide working?" Leon demanded anxiously.

"Last time I checked, it was workin' just fine. Looks to me like McCloud's got his hands full, wherever he crawled off to," Wolf explained.

"When was the last time you checked?" Leon inquired.

"Five minutes ago, Leon," Wolf droned, "I'm actually a bit worried he's gonna end up killin' himself before I can get to him. You sure it's not gonna work him over too much?"

"It was the smallest dose I could find," Leon responded defensively.

"Don't mean nothin' by it, Leon," Wolf intoned, "Just looks like McCloud's goin' through an awful lot down there."

"That's what you wanted, Wolf," Leon retorted.

Wolf smirked just a bit more.

"Leon, why ya' gotta keep buggin' me like this? Don't you got somethin' better to kill time on?" Wolf growled.

"I'm _bored_ up here." Leon moaned, "More bored than usual."

"Why's that? You runnin' out 'a small animals to torture?" Wolf sneered.

"_No_…" Leon sighed.

"Well, how come I 'aint hearin' Panther complain? What's he up to?" Wolf shrugged.

"What do you think?" Leon intoned, rolling his bulbous eyes in opposite directions, leaning back in his chair, "Playing cyber-stalker on just about every singles site on the InterLink."

"So why don't you join him?" Wolf teased, "Bet ya' could meet some cold-blooded little female right up your alley…"

"Because I'm not…" Leon snapped, his voice cracking, and then he paused, "…Never mind."

Leon then began to grumble, and it was then that Wolf noticed, at the bottom of the transmission window, Leon was running a thin, metal blade-like object back and forth over the tips of his bare fingers.

Wolf's brow furrowed in confusion and awkwardness.

"Leon…" Wolf inquired slowly, "Are you filin' your nails?"

At that moment, Leon froze, and his eyes slowly glanced down at his hand, which then slowly lowered down past the edge of the window so that it was no longer visible to Wolf.

"…No," Leon answered quietly.

"Allll-right," Wolf drawled, "Have yourself a good one. Tell Panther that if he doesn't stop clogging up the InterLink with his skirt-chasin', I'm gonna post up on every singles site I can find some of the stuff he's tested positive for. He knows what I'm talkin' about."

"Of course, Wolf," Leon replied.

"An' stop callin' me all the time, Leon," Wolf growled, "I 'aint gonna answer next time."

Before Leon could respond, Wolf cut the transmission.

The digital window vanished as Wolf leaned back and stared at the ceiling, giving some thought to his two comrades in low planetary orbit hundreds of kilometers above.

Leon Powalski had been with Wolf since the beginning of StarWolf. They'd learned to fly together, and Wolf could say that he trusted Leon, at least to the degree that he knew what to expect from him. At the same time, Leon definitely had a cold, sadistic edge that Wolf was proud to say he himself lacked. As much as Wolf disliked killing people, he still wouldn't hesitate should the situation call for it, but Leon seemed to prefer killing people to a fault. Leon liked to play with his victims, he liked to cause as much pain and fear in someone as possible before finally killing them, which made him both a good wingman but nonetheless also made Wolf cautious of him. If Leon could deal out so much mayhem and destruction with such mechanical disconnection, what was to say that he couldn't just as easily turn his sights on Wolf should the opportunity present itself? Despite his apprehensiveness, however, there was a distinctly different vibe that Wolf got from Leon, just below the surface. It was almost as if Leon had an overriding desire to be close to Wolf, as if he was committed to showing just _how_ loyal to Wolf he was. In many ways, this part of Leon made Wolf even more uncomfortable than his cruelty.

As for Panther Caruso, Wolf could not deny an undercurrent of dislike towards the cat that Panther vaguely reciprocated. They were polar opposites, the two of them. Where Wolf was practical and unpretentious, Panther was arrogant and conceited. Wolf preferred to let his actions speak more than his words ever could, whereas Panther loved to talk _all the time_. And Panther's whole 'rose' thing just really got on Wolf's nerves for some reason. They hadn't actually gotten into a fistfight (yet), but they had come close multiple times. Perhaps it might've just been the ancient myth about cats and dogs ringing true, but the relationship between Panther and Wolf clearly had almost as much hate as respect.

Despite the fact that Wolf didn't completely trust his fellow pilots (and he was sure that they felt the same), they still worked well together, capitalizing on each other's strengths. All three of them were great pilots, though Wolf still believed himself the best out of the three. Wolf was an expert saboteur and soldier, Leon a skilled assassin, and Panther made an excellent spy. Together, they made StarWolf the galactic underworld's premier mercenary service.

Here and now, however, was not StarWolfs conflict. Wolfs engagement with Fox on Temple was not about StarFox against StarWolf, though it may have begun that way.

It was about him and Fox, who was better, and nothing more; which meant that Leon and Panther had no business interfering.

Wolf turned and scooted off of his barstool, his boots hitting the hard wooden floors of the room with a scrape. He walked over to the portable computer and sat down, crossing his legs inwards as he pushed the monitor open and pressed the power button with a single clawed finger. The monitor flashed to life, revealing multiple digital windows displaying live feeds of surveillance footage from all around this area of Temple.

In preparation of his encounter with Fox, Wolf had rented a compliment of twenty HAL-6700 spy droids from the Cosmolabs firm. After leaving Fox in the grips of his Dalianide-induced delirium, Wolf had spread the droids out with the intentions of being able to monitor Fox's activities as well as keep an eye on this part of the city in general, in case any uninvited guests should wander in. At present, six of the droids were monitoring the building McCloud had wondered into, two were keeping an eye on the building that Wolf was currently occupying, while the other twelve were monitoring the various streets outside for signs of movement.

Carefully scrutinizing the screen, Wolf called up the droids assigned to monitor Fox's building. The screen was promptly filled with six windows depicting various areas of the building. Wolf selected the third window, which received the footage from the droid programmed to most closely follow Fox.

The window expanded and dominated the screen, showing a dark, rather messy-looking bedroom with what appeared to be pieces of paper strewn about. The spy droid had switched over to night vision in order to better monitor the goings-on in the room. Currently, Wolf could see McCloud sprawled out on the floor, lying on his chest, motionless.

"Check vital signs," Wolf growled, worrying that his opponent might not have survived his latest dream.

A series of graphs and lines appeared in the bottom right corner of the screen, showing the active pumping of Fox McCloud's heart. Below, there was a comment section, in which the droid's observations were recorded in regards to anomalous body activity:

**Abnormal central nervous system activity detected. Subject experiences periodic episodes of highly elevated cardiovascular activity, accompanied by abnormal electrical neuronal phenomena vaguely approximating an epileptic seizure.**

Wolf smiled, and decided to let the Dalianide do it's work.

Just as he was about to turn the screen off, he saw Fox McCloud's arm extend, as if he was reaching for something, then pitifully fall limply to the ground.

Wolf exhaled, almost feeling sympathetic.

"What're you seein'?" Wolf whispered, smiling faintly.

A sudden beeping and the appearance of another transmission dot in his implant's HUD broke Wolf's concentration. With a sigh, he accepted the transmission.

"Leon, what did I just tell ya', I--" Wolf began, only to be cut off by a cold, synthetic voice projecting the words, "**Lord O'Donnell**".

In the transmission window in Wolf's HUD was not Leon, but the robotic operator of the _Lone Wolf_, IG-N 96. A black-coated Chang Robotics Enterprises AK-220 Automaton, IG's rather insectoid head and scratchy voice sometimes made Wolf think about getting a different, less creepy android. IG's effectiveness and unique hint of personality almost always proved more than enough to put Wolf's thoughts to rest in the end.

"What's goin' on, IG?" Wolf inquired, knowing that IG wouldn't have called unless there was a reason.

"**Sensors have detected the launch of a medium-sized shuttle from the **_**Great Fox**_**. At current trajectory, the shuttle will have entered the atmosphere of Temple and entered within a twenty kilometer radius of your location in approximately nineteen minutes,**" IG responded.

Wolf stood up at full alertness, shutting the monitor of the computer with his foot.

"Shit," Wolf growled, "Who's on it?"

"**Scans of the shuttle reveal no life forms aboard. In all probability, the pilot of the shuttle is the Team StarFox robot, ROB-64,**" IG informed him.

"Today's just full 'a surprises, 'aint it?" Wolf scowled, rushing towards the stairs at the end of the room, taking off at full sprint.

As his boots stomped into each of the steps, Wolf barked to IG, "I thought that robot was supposed to be operatin' the _Great Fox_. What's he doin' playin' search 'n rescue?"

"**ROB-64 could be able to control some functions of the **_**Great Fox **_**by remote. It is fundamental programming in all robots that the welfare of one's owner takes priority over all other orders,**" IG informed in a matter-of-factly tone.

"Fan-fuckin'-tastic," Wolf grunted, reaching the top of the stairs and kicking open the door as he cut the transmission.

The sun had fully set by now, the skies of Temple above teeming with stars and the grey, rocky fields of massive debris that floated above in orbit. The space junk melted all together from so far away, appearing as a solid, rough strip of grey that split the sky in two.

He stepped out into the cold night air, his boots crunching on the gravel covering the roof of the building.

Under the bright, pale light of Temple's twin moons, his Wolfen awaited him like an impatient lover, her four wings currently joined in the middle into two wings at either side. As Wolf stepped closer to his Wolfen, her proximity sensors detected both his approach and his identity, and she hummed awake as her cockpit glowed with the light of activating instrument panels. The Wolfen's canopy opened up with a quiet hiss, allowing Wolf to grab the rims of the cockpit and hoist himself up over the edge of her black fuselage and into the pilot's seat.

Wolf slumped into the comfortable seat and began to strap himself into the safety harness, watching as the HUD on his implant changed in response to him entering his fighter, the center of his vision being taken up by a targeting crosshair.

Wolf pressed the canopy button, looking up to watch as the canopy smoothly hinged down and locked over the cockpit. Wolf looked around as the Wolfen's four powerful engines roared to life, and caught a look at the twin moons over Temple.

For a moment, Wolf was mesmerized.

His parents had been obsessed with the moon. They'd always take him and his siblings out every full moon night just look at it for hours.

It had been so long since Wolf was actually on a planet's surface instead of in space, and the moons actually gave him an overriding feeling of haunting nostalgia. In that split-second, the moons dominated his senses, and Wolf felt just like a pup again, nervous and short of breath as his jaw went slack.

'ENGINES ON-LINE', the computer flashed on his heads-up display, shaking Wolf out of his trance.

He dismissed his reverie with a quiet scoff. Now wasn't the time to be thinking about the past.

It wasn't as if there was much happiness to be found there, anyway.

Wolf gripped the control stick of the Wolfen with his clawed hands as he engaged the Wolfen's G-diffusers for a vertical takeoff.

There was a rumbling as the Wolfen hovered into the air above the roof, her landing gear retracting into her body. With a final press of a button, the Wolfen's wings unfolded and separated into their distinctive wicked x-shape.

'S-FOILS LOCKED IN ATTACK POSITION. ALL SYSTEMS GO', the computer displayed for Wolf to read.

"Let's make some noise," Wolf growled, slamming the throttle from completely down to completely up, hearing the deafening shriek as all four of the Wolfen's engines screamed to life in a blast of green fire.

Wolf felt that first pounding of g-forces before the inertial compensators kicked in, that striking, paralyzing feeling that vibrated every inch of his flesh and bones and brought out the animal inside.

He laughed with pleasure as the Wolfen rocketed off into the night, almost feeling the urge to howl as gravity pressed him back into his seat.

With anticlimactic suddenness like a premature ejaculation, the inertial compensators activated and robbed Wolf of the exhilarating feeling of going from zero to one thousand kilometers per hour in 14.64 seconds.

Wolf sighed and looked down as the ground fell further and further away from view until all he could see out of the canopy was the endless night sky.

Wolf's love of flying was second best only to his love of fighting, probably because he couldn't let loose like he could in a fight. An out-of-control fighter was scary; an out-of-control pilot was sloppy.

"**Archives have matched the registry data of the shuttle, Lord O'Donnell,**" IG's voice rasped over the comm. channel,"**Ship is registered as the **_**Pleiades**_**, a Cosmolabs **_**Maia**_**-class shuttle. The ship possesses no registered weapons, however it does possess the heavy armor and shielding that comes standard on the **_**Maia**_**-class.**"

"_Registered_ weapons, huh?" Wolf inquired, scratching the grey fur below his muzzle softly before returning his hand to his control stick.

"**I am not prepared to rule out the possibility of Team StarFox installing certain after-market upgrades to the **_**Pleiades**_** at this point, Lord O'Donnell,**" IG replied.

"It's definitely what we woulda' done," Wolf smirked.

"**My point, Lord O'Donnell, is not lost on you,**" IG retorted, in a tone that was almost sarcastic.

Wolf smiled at how IG's unsettling qualities contrasted with his occasional bouts of sophistication.

"**I have plotted the current course of the **_**Pleiades**_** on your radar,**" IG offered.

Wolf glanced down at the radar display on his HUD and saw a red dot appearing on the rim of the circular radar.

"Thanks, IG", Wolf responded, piloting the Wolfen in the direction of the dot.

"**My purpose is served, Lord O'Donnell. Fare well against my StarFox counterpart. It would be a shame to see the great Wolf O'Donnell bested by a robot,**" IG saluted graciously.

Wolf's furry eyebrow raised, but he dismissed the comment, focusing instead on the sky ahead of him.

Far off in the distance, Wolf could just make out the orange glowing shape of a large object entering the atmosphere of Temple.

Wolf throttled down and held a clawed thumb over the red firing button on his control stick as the glowing object grew closer and closer, his eye narrowing.

As the object came within two kilometers, Wolf stabbed his thumb into the firing button and held down, hearing the lasers charge up and finally peak in power.

The targeting crosshair on Wolf's HUD turned red as it locked onto the re-entering spacecraft.

Wolf released the button and saw as the glowing crimson ball of energy spat out from between the split fuselage of the Wolfen, tearing through the air and searing its way towards the flaming shuttle.

The charged shot smacked into the re-entering starship, which leapt through the air and performed an uncontrolled downwards loop as it attempted to regain control.

Taking fire while in re-entry was probably the hardest thing to deal with for any pilot, a combination of the two biggest dangers of flying a star fighter.

The flaming shuttle tumbled through the air and Wolf gave off a crooked smile as he banked the Wolfen back around to get a better view.

Perhaps this would be easier than he thought, and the shuttle would just break apart after being knocked out of it's safe re-entry position.

As if on cue, there was a massive flare of orange as the shuttle's gravity brakes engaged full blast and the re-entry fires dissipated and cleared.

The _Pleiades _swerved through the air, a large grey strip of wings with four small engines grouped around a fifth larger one, connected to an arrowhead-shaped front section. Wolf frowned and positioned the Wolfen head-on with the _Pleiades_, opening a public comm. channel as he sped towards the starship.

"Turn it around, tin man," Wolf snarled, "Stick to flyin' that oversized garbage scow you call a mother ship."

"**Your objection is noted,**" ROB-64's synthesized voice came over the comm. unit.

Without another word, the _Pleiades_' five engines blasted to life and the shuttle roared past Wolf, diving further down towards the unnamed city of Temple.

Wolf hissed indignantly and shook his head in quiet fury.

"You do _not_ disrespect _me_," Wolf growled.

He throttled fully up and heard the Wolfen's engines roar as he pushed the stick forward and dove after the shuttle.

The clouds and skies streaked past Wolf's canopy as the Wolfen tore after the _Pleiades_, the ground getting closer every second.

At almost the exact moment that Wolf aligned his crosshairs onto the shuttle's largest engine, the gravity brakes engaged once again and the _Pleiades_ pulled up swiftly out of its nosedive, taking off over the city skyline and narrowly missing a full-on collision with a massive towering skyscraper.

Wolf engaged the Wolfen's gravity brakes, pulling easily out of the dive and continuing in pursuit of the _Pleiades_, guiding his crosshairs onto the ship and firing as he flew just over 200 meters behind the shuttle.

The Wolfen's powerful laser cannons barked and sent hissing streams of red through the air, punching into the back of the _Pleiades_ with a loud electric crackle.

Wolf could see the ghostly blue outline of the shield bubble over the _Pleiades_ make an appearance each time the laser blasts hit, never growing fainter no matter how many times he fired.

"Tough little bastard," Wolf muttered, holding down on the firing button to charge up another shot.

"**Cornerian guidelines recommend a one-kilometer minimum following distance, to reduce likelihood of mid-air collision,**" ROB informed him indifferently.

Just as Wolf began to absorb the android's words, the _Pleiades_ came to a full mid-air halt, a massive, heavily-shielded obstacle just begging for him to smash into.

Wolf didn't even breathe, just jerked the control stick back and pulled up sharply, just barely clearing the top of the _Pleiades _as the Wolfen closed the two-hundred meter distance in a half-second.

Wolf heard a rough, odd grinding sound as the defensive energy shields of his Wolfen and the _Pleiades_ scraped against each other, creating a strong repelling effect that sent the Wolfen upwards like a stone skipping across water.

Wolf yelped in surprise, trying to regain control of his ship as she wobbled through the air, speeding towards a monumental stone skyscraper. He pulled the throttle down and yanked the control stick to the right, performing a lightning-fast barrel roll that sent the Wolfen speeding past the skyscraper, barely perhaps twenty meters or so from smashing into the side.

Wolf brought the fighter around in the sharpest turn that he could, gritting his teeth in anger as the _Pleiades_ soared over the buildings away from him.

He noticed that he'd kept his thumb on the firing button the entire time; the charged shot still gathering energy from the laser cannons. As of right now, the power levels for the shot were as high as they could go.

Wolf put up a devious smile and throttled up hard, pushing the Wolfen back on course with a scream of the engines, the fleeing _Pleiades_ coming closer and closer into view.

The crosshairs turned red as the targeting computer locked on to the shuttle, and without a word Wolf released the button and let the shot go.

There was a blast of red and a surge of energy as the charged shot exploded from the Wolfen's laser cannons, the light almost blinding him as the fat bolt of energy streaked across the sky like a comet. The charged shot hit the _Pleiades_ right under her main engine, smacking into the shuttle's underside and exploding in a massive flash of crimson light.

The shields held, but the ship could not withstand the massive impact of the laser blast, rolling once through the air and then swerving off path, speeding uncontrollably into a massive curving tower of glass and steel.

The _Pleiades _slammed into the corner of the skyscraper's curvaceous façade, the gargantuan crash of glass and stone being shattered and crumbled echoing throughout the city, so loud that even Wolf could hear it in the cockpit.

The _Pleiades_ swerved through the air, trailing debris as it continued to glide after taking a massive four-to-five story chunk out of the skyscraper's corner, it's rear wings visibly warped from the impact. Wolf laughed triumphantly as the Wolfen flew past the wounded skyscraper, trailing the _Pleiades_ on her erratic flight path.

"Ain't nobody a badass after that…" Wolf chuckled, bearing down on the _Pleiades _and tapping the firing button with his claw.

Being sure to keep a safe distance this time, Wolf throttled down and continuously pelted the shuttle with repeated laser blasts, watching the blue shield bubble beginning to grow fainter.

Wolf grinned roguishly, pressing the firing button even more frequently, constantly whittling away at his prey's resolve.

"IG," Wolf demanded, "How far away is McCloud from here?"

"**He has not moved from his previous location, which is approximately twelve kilometers from your current trajectory, Lord O'Donnell. At present, both you and the target ship are moving away from his position,**" IG-N 96 informed him.

_Good, _Wolf thought.

If McCloud couldn't be injured by any collateral damage, then Wolf was free to destroy as much of the city as he saw fit to stop the _Pleiades_ from reaching him.

"**Lord O'Donnell,**" IG's voice came over the comm. channel, "**Comrade Powalski requests permission to launch his Wolfen in order to assist. What should I tell him?**"

"Fuck no!" Wolf snapped, continuing his barrage on the weakened shuttle.

A moment passed, and IG's voice came back over the channel.

"**Comrade Powalski respectfully objects, Lord O'Donnell,**" IG informed Wolf in an indifferent tone.

Just under IG's synthetic words, Wolf could hear Leon's high-pitched voice screaming several vulgar obscenities at both him and the robot.

Wolf simply ignored them and switched off the comm. channel for the _Lone Wolf_, returning his focus to the trespassing shuttle.

The _Pleiades_' shields appeared to be weakening, the blue glow from her leftmost engine flickering hesitantly as she continued to speed over the rooftops.

Wolf guided the crosshairs over to the engine and resumed taking his pot shots; the Wolfen spewing her red laser bolts again and again in rapid succession.

The shields crackled and faded out of view temporarily, and Wolf felt a rush of pleasure as he fired one more time and saw the red laser blast impact the exhaust of the _Pleiades_ engine, exploding with a red flare as the engine backfired and died.

The _Pleiades_ wavered as her engine stopped spewing blue jets of engine fire and began to leak sparks and a trail of black smoke.

Wolf tapped the firing button again, the lasers this time being absorbed by the shields. They must've regenerated after a moment or two. Or maybe ROB-64 was more resourceful than Wolf would've given him credit for.

Either way, the shields on the _Pleiades_ couldn't take much more than what they'd already absorbed before failing again.

Wolf held down the firing button for another charged shot, the power levels whirring upwards.

He couldn't resist the urge to let out a snarl of triumphant malice as the targeting computer locked.

Wolf released the charged shot, which zapped out of the Wolfen's laser cannons and punched through the shields of the _Pleiades_, bursting apart right above her engine clusters, visibly cooking the shuttle's durasteel hide.

She lost about a hundred meters of altitude, scraping the rooftop of a low building before rising back up unsteadily.

Wolf checked the ammunition readout for the Wolfen's bomb magazine, smirking with pleasure as he saw that he had one smart bomb left.

A direct hit would blast the _Pleiades_ to fiery metal bits.

Throttling almost all the way down, Wolf armed his smart bomb and locked onto the _Pleiades_, allowing the ship to pull further ahead of him.

"Hope you've got your seatbelt on," Wolf sneered, and then fired.

The cone shape of the smart bomb launched from the Wolfen, leaving a bright red trail behind it as it streaked into the air.

Just as the bomb closed the distance between itself and the _Pleiades_, the shuttle banked hard to the left in a desperate evasive maneuver, avoiding the oncoming smart bomb as it shot past and detonated in a brilliant blue and orange flash that turned night into day.

The explosion tore through the city, blasting apart a small skyscraper in a massive falling pile of debris and dust, creating a domino effect that collapsed several buildings around it into rubble.

Immense clouds of dust rose up into the sky as the explosion dissipated and the light of the nova bomb faded away, obscuring vision as they floated to the low altitudes that Wolf had been flying at.

As he banked the Wolfen to the left, Wolf saw the _Pleiades_ weaving through the air and coming in for a landing in a moderately clear stretch of urban territory, surrounded by small, multistory structures with broken, empty windows.

This part of the city was clearly in less favorable conditions than the part he and McCloud had touched down in, though this was possibly because of the recent nova bomb detonation.

Wolf selected the building that looked the most stable and entered in the landing protocols, the G-diffusers rumbling for a vertical descent.

The Wolfen's landing gear extended and her four bladelike wings joined back into two as she slowly dipped through the air, settling down on the rooftop with the slightest jolt.

He clicked the release of his safety harness and opened the Wolfen's canopy as the thick clouds of dust from the collapsed buildings began to billow into the area.

Thinking quickly, Wolf opened the emergency panel next to his seat, withdrawing a small portable rebreather with a miniaturized oxygen tank. He slipped the mask over his muzzle and pressed the button to activate the rebreather, feeling the rush of clean air into his nose.

With the dust and debris this thick in the air, suffocating from the particles in the air was a serious issue, one that ROB wouldn't have to deal with. Wolf promptly hopped out of the cockpit.

His boots hit the surface of the roof hard, resounding slap, and he looked around cautiously as he yanked his blaster out of its holster.

Wolf blinked repeatedly from the thick, dark grey dust swirling around him, and closed his eye to prevent from being blinded, letting his implant perform all of his visual needs. Even through the blue tint of his optical implant, Wolf could barely see through the dust.

"Infrared," Wolf growled quietly.

His implant recognized his voice and switched from the visible to the infrared spectrum. The vision in his implant flickered once or twice before the world he saw became a ghostly mix of black and white. The fog was invisible, and any surface that radiated a small amount of heat appeared brighter shade of white. The colder an object was, the darker it appeared.

The advantages that his implant's infrared function offered were invaluable, allowing him to see even when there was no visible light at all, navigating by the heat that an object put off. At high enough sensitivities, Wolf could see through walls to a limited extent. The dust, which consisted of particles smaller than the wavelength of the infrared spectrum, was completely invisible.

The downside of all of this was the lack of detail that could make it difficult to tell just who you were shooting at. The fact that ROB-64's metal shell wouldn't radiate as much natural heat as a living body normally did also worried Wolf a bit, and he hoped that the dust would clear soon.

Sucking down another lungful of air from his rebreather, his blaster clenched in his right hand, Wolf traveled carefully down the stone stairwells from the roof to the top floor of the derelict building.

The grayish white walls of the building had a disturbing, sterile feel to them in the way that they appeared in infrared vision, everything looking mixed, blended. As Wolf began to walk down the hallway he'd found himself in, he looked out one of the open, bare windowsills to see the _Pleiades _resting in the clearing in between all of the nearby buildings, unmoving.

In the infrared spectrum, the shuttle was a bright, virgin white, reflecting the amount of heat that it had absorbed from Wolf's laser shots.

He continued on, traveling down the hallway.

Wolf turned a corner to find that the hallway just dropped off, an entire section of the building having collapsed some time ago, with a large hole in the wall leading to a massive pile of rubble that sloped down all nine floors of the building, giving easy access to the ground.

Wolf hadn't noticed this when he'd come in for a landing, and considered whether or not the building was still stable.

He decided to risk it and focus instead on his robot problem.

Ducking out of the hole, Wolf hopped down the improvised ramp of debris, catching himself a few times and nearly falling or slipping.

He managed to make it to the ground safely in a quick enough fashion, seeing the nose of the _Pleiades_ just around the corner of the building.

Wolf waved his hand through the air, no longer feeling the thick, vaguely tickling sensation that the thick clouds of dust had created.

"Visible," Wolf whispered.

With another hesitant flickering, Wolf's implant switched to the normal visible spectrum again, showing that the dust had settled for the most part, which was good enough for him to see through.

Wolf carefully opened his eye, which had begun to ache, and no longer felt it stinging from the dust.

Now seeing with both his eye and his implant, Wolf took off his rebreather and set it quietly on the ground, intending to pick it up later.

His claws dug into the handle of his blaster, holding it close to his body, as he peeked around the corner of the building.

Extended from the underside of the _Pleiades_ was a boarding ramp, upon which was a humanoid robot with a single red optical sensor on the top of it's head. A large, jaw-like grille dominated the bottom side of its head, whilst the flying-fox symbol of Team StarFox adorned the top of its chest.

ROB-64 didn't look so tough.

Wolf extended his hand, bringing the blaster's sights to bear on the robot, which still hadn't noticed him.

His implant's targeting program automatically drew a large crosshair on the android as he lined up his shot.

Without a word, Wolf squeezed the trigger, and the blaster let out a shrill, crackling pop as it spat a large glob of green plasma that sped towards the robot and the ship.

Almost too fast to see, ROB leapt backwards into the ship, dodging the plasma bolt, which smacked into the _Pleiades_' hull and disintegrated.

"Who're you tryin' to kid, tin man?!" Wolf called out, "Ya' can barely fly that ship you got there, not to mention the _Great Fox_. If you think a protocol droid's gonna take _me_ on head-to-head, you must've short-circuited!"

There was a few moments of silence as Wolf stayed still, aiming his blaster at the ramp, waiting for something to happen.

A series of heavy metal footsteps from inside the _Pleiades_ made Wolf's ears prick up in alert, and his tail went stiff.

There was something different about the robot this time, but Wolf couldn't be sure.

"**Correction: I am a versatile protocol and engineering droid, fluent in verbal translation, starship operation and repairs,**" ROB's synthetic voice responded loudly, "**However, should needs prove more practical, I am also programmed with direct fire support in mind**".

Wolf was caught off guard as ROB quickly leapt out of the _Pleiades_, the robot's optical sensor glowing a malevolent bright red, a heavy repeating plasma cannon mounted on it's shoulder.

Wolf was halfway through uttering a surprised gasp when ROB fired, unleashing a rapid stream of orange plasma bolts that sprayed out of the cannon and began to saturate the building.

Leaping back as the dozens of plasma blasts began to tear into the building's masonry, Wolf snarled in anguish as he dove into one of the empty windows and took cover under the windowsill.

The roar of the plasma cannon continued as the rapid-fire energy weapon fired an endless barrage of particle beams that quickly pockmarked the entire side of the building.

Silently cursing himself, Wolf's eye darted around as he tried to figure out what to do, and suddenly the firing stopped.

"**Priority one: Protect shuttle **_**Pleiades**_**,**" ROB intoned, "**Priority two: Terminate hostile subject Wolf O'Donnell**".

_You just _had _to piss it off, didn't ya', O'Donnell?_ Wolf thought to himself grimly.

Baring his teeth in a maddened snarl, Wolf leapt up from his hiding spot and began to sprint through the building, firing a shot from his blaster out of another window blindly as the plasma cannon began to fire once more. Wolf felt the building shake as his boots scraped on the stone floors and his open blue vest began to flap against the sides of his chest.

He stayed as low as he could as he continued to run through the building's ground floor, passing several windows and just barely missing a large plasma bolt as it seared through the air and blasted a hole into the wall behind him.

Wolf then threw himself into another corner, shoving his back into the walls and trying to make himself small, breathing hard through his mouth.

His metal shoulder plates were feeling heavy now; sweat beginning to form on his chest.

Wolf's jaw hung slack and he began to pant in tiredness and fear, his tongue resting on his bottom front teeth.

He reached inside his open vest and felt the black sleeveless shirt he wore underneath, opening his palm and feeling his heart punching into his ribcage.

"Comm. channel, _Lone Wolf_," Wolf breathed.

His implant complied and re-opened a communications channel to the StarWolf mother ship.

There was a moment as the implant's internal comlink began to initiate the transmission, then a small digital window appeared in the lower left corner of Wolf's implant.

In the window was a lithe feline with golden yellow eyes and midnight-black fur. Below his right eye was a curving, crescent white marking that contrasted greatly with his otherwise dark coat.

Panther Caruso's gaze was off to the side, however he quickly noticed the open transmission and faced Wolf with some measure of unawares.

"Oh, Wolf," Panther purred in his distinct, velvety voice, "How are things going?"

"Panther?!" Wolf demanded, "Where's Leon and IG?"

"They're arguing right now. IG won't release the docking clamps for Leon to take off. Why Leon wants to go out now, I have no idea. What are you up to?" Panther inquired in a bored tone.

The stress of the current situation, coupled with Wolf's hint of dislike of Panther in general, made the cat's slow, lazy manner of speaking all the more infuriating.

"You prick, I'm gettin' SHOT at!" Wolf snarled.

Panther was clearly taken aback and blinked slowly once or twice. The baffled look on Panther's face seemed to suggest that Wolf had asked him the square root of pi rather than informing him of the situation.

"Oh…" Panther stammered, "…I suppose you'll be wanting…help or something then… right?"

"Oh, fuck you!!" Wolf roared, severing the transmission in a fit of rage.

If his teammates were going to be this useless, then Wolf was truly on his own.

It was then that Wolf noticed that the plasma cannon had stopped firing, and instead Wolf could hear ROB-64's steps growing closer and closer.

Wolf wrapped the fingers of his left hand around his blaster, in order to keep a steadier aim as he pointed the business end of the particle beam weapon down the dark hallway.

"**Continued aggression will only prompt aggression in response. Your surrender, coinciding with your relinquishment of Commander Fox McCloud, is the only action that may guarantee a non-lethal response,**" ROB's voice offered.

"Over my dead body," Wolf barked.

"**Your proposal is acceptable,**" ROB replied in an eerie softness.

With alarming suddenness, ROB sidestepped through one of the open windows at the end of the hall, bringing its plasma cannon to bear on Wolf.

Wolf squeezed off one shot and dived out of the way, lunging around a corner as the plasma cannon rained down hell on the hallway.

As Wolf ran through the building and approached a crumbling set of stairs, he glanced over his shoulder to see that the space he had occupied barely a second ago was now a gaping, burnt-out hole in the wall.

He dashed towards the stairs, hitting the eroded steps hard as he began to ascend, more jumping up the stairs than running.

Near the last step before the stairway landing, Wolf's heavy boot smashed through the stone as it crumbled underneath his weight, and he gave a small yelp as he fell forward into the landing.

The wind knocked out of him, Wolf was slower to pick himself up as he wheezed and gasped in the efforts to catch his breath.

The plasma cannon roared again as ROB turned the corner and fired at Wolf, blasting apart the stairs and walls with a spray of orange plasma.

A single plasma bolt caught Wolf's shoulder plate and threw him across the landing, slamming him roughly into the wall as ROB ceased firing and began to approach.

A dazed Wolf stood to his feet just as the edge of the plasma cannon appeared upon the landing, with the rest of ROB quickly climbing what was left of the stairs.

With a canine snarl, Wolf leapt forwards and swiped with his claws, hearing a squeal of scratching metal as his razor-sharp nails scraped into the metal shell of ROB's torso.

The android teetered to the side as it tried to regain balance, and Wolf growled as he grabbed a hold of the plasma cannon and shoved forwards, forcing ROB to take a step back to keep itself steady.

Wolf hopped backwards and twisted, extending his foot in a vicious crescent kick that bashed right into the StarFox logo on ROB's chest and sent him falling down the stairs.

The android collapsed onto the floor just as Wolf fired another shot from his blaster with a feral grin on his face, the bright green plasma bolt darting from the end of the firearm to ROB's left elbow, exploding with a shower of sparks.

Wolf dove to the side just as ROB unleashed another stream of plasma from the cannon, the bolts pounding into the walls and ceiling as the robot frantically tried to find his target. Wolf sprinted up the second set of stairs that broke off from the landing, heading up to the second floor.

As quickly as he'd been able to catch ROB off guard, Wolf wasn't willing to press his luck. Not when the opposing robot had a heavy repeating plasma cannon that it was just itching to fry him with.

Wolf continued up the stairs to the second, third, and fourth floors, working up a sweat and panting slightly as the stairs took a toll on his legs. In spite of his body's pleas to take it easy, Wolf continued on his way up the stairs.

He had a plan in his mind, but he would need to be well ahead of ROB in order for it to have any chance of success.

Wolf had seen how unstable the building was, and ROB's constant shooting had only weakened the structure. If he could get to his Wolfen, fire her up and blast the place from the air with her powerful laser cannons, he'd bring the whole building down on the android.

The rush of adrenaline got to Wolf as he sped up the stairs, his heart rate pumping and his mind racing, and he grinned from ear to ear with the thrill of it all.

He only wished that McCloud would put up this much of a fight when the time came.

The animal in Wolf came out, and he bounded up the stairs, clawing against the walls with the fur on his tail standing on end and saliva dripping from his jaws as he tore up the steps.

The floors of the building seemed to fly past, fifth floor, sixth floor, seventh and eighth, and finally leading up to that last ninth floor and the short flight of stairs that led to the roof.

Wolf let out a wild yell as he flew up the stairs and onto the roof, bathed in the pale light of Temple's twin moons.

His Wolfen responded beautifully to his approach, opening the canopy and humming to life as he leapt through the air and climbed inside of her.

He didn't even bother to strap himself in, quickly firing up the engines and diverting power to the G-diffusers as fast as he could.

'ENGINES ON-LINE', the computer responded as the four engines whistled in screaming ignition.

Wolf's claws flew over the control panels of the Wolfen, demanding that she take off. The G-diffusers rumbled to life faster than ever before, shaking the roof of the building and lifting the Wolfen into the air. It wasn't until Wolf heard the unusually loud roar of the engines lighting up and the rush of wind on his fur that he even realized that he'd forgotten to close the canopy.

Pressing the buttons at the same time, Wolf watched as his ship's canopy closed over his head while her four wings simultaneously divided into their distinctive x-shape. Automatically, the Wolfen's landing gear retracted as the wings secured themselves into position.

'S-FOILS LOCKED IN ATTACK POSITION. ALL SYSTEMS GO', the computer informed him silently.

His implant's heads-up display finally changed to accommodate for the Wolfen's targeting systems and readouts, and Wolf pulled back on the stick to get as far away from the building as possible.

Operating fully on G-diffusion, the engines throttled completely down, the Wolfen merely hovered backwards softly through the air, sliding away from the building more and more with every moment.

"C'mon, you bastard," Wolf growled as he targeted the roof.

Wolf pressed his thumb into the firing button on the control stick and held down, charging the laser cannons just for good measure.

As the power levels of the laser cannons surged upwards, he saw a small grey figure leap up onto the roof and let loose a concentrated volley of orange blasts from it's repeating plasma cannon.

With a rattling growl of surprise, Wolf jerked the control stick to the side, feeling as the Wolfen lurched to the right and glided through the air slowly.

Since the engines weren't engaged and she was traveling at essentially zero speed, the Wolfen could barely perform any of the aerial maneuvers that she could at her astronomical operating speeds, nor could she move anywhere near as fast.

However, since her engines were currently unused, it meant that there was tons of power left to spare.

Acting quickly, Wolf called up the power distribution display, diverting 75 percent of the power from the engines, leaving them with the bare minimum 25 percent they needed in order to adequately function. He then gave 25 percent of the extra power to the Wolfen's already powerful laser cannons, pumping the final 50 percent of power into the shields.

The Wolfen's shields glowed with massive amounts of energy, easily absorbing the repeated hits from the plasma cannon without breaking a sweat.

Wolf steadied the fighter and once more targeted the roof, ignoring the plasma shots coming from ROB as the Wolfen's hyped-up shields blocked them.

"My turn!" Wolf roared, tapping the firing button.

The Wolfen's laser cannons barked, unleashing rapid-fire blasts of red that blasted into the roof, chewing the stone and ferroconcrete up in dozens of small crimson flashes.

The plasma cannon stopped firing as Wolf watched ROB-64's small outline running for cover.

Wolf smiled and continued firing, inundating the roof with more and more laser blasts, watching as chunks of masonry flew in the air with clouds of dust. He couldn't tell if ROB was still on the roof, if it had jumped, or if the Wolfen's lasers had blasted it apart.

He didn't care, too absorbed in the mayhem of destruction as he held down the firing button for the coup de grâce.

The lasers charged up with a glorious hum, their power levels reaching the maximum.

"Try takin' note of _this_ objection, tin man," Wolf hissed.

He released the firing button with a rush of pleasure and adrenaline, listening as the laser cannons belched out a massive glowing oval of red that burst forth from the Wolfen's laser cannons and plowed into the roof.

There was a tumultuous tremor as the building appeared to swell outward slightly for a split-second, almost like a balloon, then the entire structure promptly collapsed in a massive avalanche of debris that appeared to be half-explosion and half-implosion.

Another dark cloud of dust began to rise up from the structure's collapse, enveloping the Wolfen.

Wolf threw his head back and began to laugh to himself as the dust began to block out the stars, but not the moons.

As Wolf's eye caught the moons over Temple, he was once again enthralled, captivated by the bloodless twins in the sky.

He finally understood why his parents were so obsessed.

The moon brought out something in a wolf. Something sublimely primitive and basic, but undeniably powerful.

No longer really thinking straight, Wolf inhaled deeply and craned his head straight up, letting out a piercing, echoing howl that reverberated all around the tiny cockpit.

As soon as all of the air was gone from his lungs, Wolf's head drooped and he laughed in an adrenaline-drunk haze.

McCloud had better put up this much of a fight. If his damned robot could inspire such a thrill, then the fox himself was expected to stop Wolf's heart. Wolf wouldn't tolerate any less. He wouldn't just kill McCloud; he'd drink the fox's _blood _if he didn't live up to expectations.

Just as Wolf was regaining himself, his laughter dying down to a chuckle, he looked up to see, just barely visible through the dust, a distinctive grouping of four blue engines beginning to fly away in the night.

Wolf gritted his teeth in fury as the _Pleiades _began to disappear into the distance.

"For fucks sakes!" Wolf snapped.

It appeared that even ROB-64 was privy to Team StarFox's famous luck.

Wolf grabbed the throttle, preparing to slam it forwards and tear after the _Pleiades_ and blow it out of the sky, just as the orange dot of an incoming transmission appeared on his heads-up display.

Since he was in the Wolfen instead of on the ground, he would only receive audio transmissions to minimize distractions, which made it even slightly more frustrating to not know, up front, who he was talking to.

Wolf accepted the transmission with a growl.

"What is it?!" Wolf ordered.

"**I just wanted to inform you, Lord O'Donnell, that the **_**Pleiades**_** should be heading back to the **_**Great Fox**_** as we speak,**" IG-N 96's voice came over the channel.

"Why's that?" Wolf rumbled.

"**Keeping in compliance with your orders, I prevented Comrade Powalski from launching his Wolfen to assist. However, I also recognized the difficulties that ROB-64 could pose, and I brought the **_**Lone Wolf**_** around to fire several shots on the **_**Great Fox**_**'s forward shields. Knowing that ROB-64's primary function is the maintenance and operation of the **_**Great Fox**_**, it was logical to assume that he would retreat should it be threatened. Comrades Powalski and Caruso agreed,**" IG answered.

"Why'd you do that?!" Wolf interrogated.

"**I told you before that it was fundamental programming in all robots that the welfare of one's owner takes priority over all other orders,**" IG coolly responded, "**Comrades Powalski and Caruso were also concerned for your safety, in their own ways**".

"I don't NEED your fuckin' HELP!!" Wolf roared.

"**To be quite frank, Lord O'Donnell, I don't think you quite know _what_ you need. That's why you've gotten so convinced lately that some epic duel with Fox McCloud is going to clear up all of your self-esteem and trust issues. Neither myself nor Comrades Powalski and Caruso are so arrogant as to assume that we know what you need, but until you figure that out, we will be there to help you, regardless of your willingness to admit it,**" IG retorted.

The robot's statements only infuriated Wolf more, to the point that he considered flying his Wolfen right up to the _Lone Wolf_ and personally dismantling IG-N 96.

"Next time you feel like giving life advice, keep in mind you're a piece 'a _property_," Wolf snarled, "And the next time you disobey my orders, in _any_ way, I'm gonna' come up there and rip you the fuck apart."

"**It's been a pleasure talking to you, Lord O'Donnell. As always, one is glad to be of service,**" IG responded politely, ending the transmission without another word.

Wolf was gritting his teeth so hard he thought they were going to shatter in his mouth, his blood boiling in rage.

IG and Leon and Panther had all tainted his victory, leaving the possibility open that, had they not interfered, the fight might have gone on. Which meant that Wolf hadn't really won the fight that he'd just put so much effort into.

He struggled to calm himself, and found that nothing would settle the beast inside of him.

In a last desperate effort, Wolf strapped himself into the safety harness and changed the power settings to their default level, restoring the engines to full power. He then slammed the throttle all the way up, hearing the engines scream as the Wolfen shot forwards.

Wolf yanked the control stick backwards, and the Wolfen pulled up and pointed straight at the moons over Temple as the massive g-forces pounded into him and forced him to the back of his seat. Wolf let out a bloodcurdling yell of fury that seemed to vibrate the cockpit itself and threatened to deafen him.

Just as Wolf felt the charge of acceleration, that sensation of speed that made him feel like he was going to fly right into the moons themselves hit his very core, the inertial compensators kicked in and once more robbed Wolf of his rush.

Breathing hard as he glared into the moons, Wolf knew that there was only one thing that could make this all go away: McCloud.

All of this was because of McCloud, and only McCloud could offer Wolf the challenge that he needed to rise up to in order to appease his thirst for combat.

It wouldn't be much longer now. The Dalianide was only enough to last for about twenty-four hours. After that, Wolf would see just which one of them was truly better.

Tomorrow, Wolf would have his fight to the death.

Tomorrow, one way or another, it would all be over.

After a few moments, Wolf finally calmed down and pulled the Wolfen out of it's upwards climb, throttling down and directing the fighter back towards his makeshift den about twenty kilometers away. Dawn was still hours away from now, and even though he still had some preparations to make, the excitement tonight had drained Wolf.

He needed rest for what was to come.

* * *

To be concluded. The more reviews I get, the faster it shall be updated. I hope you all feel refreshed enough for a concluding chapter filled with more angst, delusions, and ass-kicking.


	3. Act Three: The Duel of the Dogs

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Ahh, Falco. If Fox is the Han Solo and Wolf the Boba Fett, then Falco is the Arthur Fonzarelli (Fonzie for the less pop-culture literate) of StarFox. That distinctive Italian-Brooklyn accent of his, and his general character, makes him one of the series' most beloved characters. Falco finally makes an appearance in this chapter, the climactic conclusion of A Great Day to Die, in which Fox's nightmarish visions come to a sanity-threatening head, and Fox must finally confront both his past and his sworn enemy. This chapter is, I warn you, the longest of all of them. Even I'll admit, it's long as hell. But then again, that should be tempered by the fact that the story's suspense, action, and most of all, emotion, are at their most intense here. Before we get started on this finale, I'd like to thank all of my faithful and kind reviewers. Kadhil, Anon: The Next Generation, killr noob (Bradley, :-P), and everyone else, this one's for you. Have fun with what has become one of the most enjoyable stories, and definitely the most enjoyable fanfiction, that I have ever written.

* * *

_"…Dad?"_

_"Yeah, Fox?"_

_"What's it like…up there?"_

_"What do you mean, son?"_

_"In space. What's it like to fly up there?"_

_"I've taken you flying before. And you've been on the_ Great Fox_."_

_"Yeah, but you've taken me flying in the sky before, Dad. And that was just in the _Pleiades_. And the_ Great Fox_ is SO big! I wanna know what it's like to fly in an _Arwing_. And in _space_. What's that like?"_

_"Haha. It's different, all right. Not like you'd think, though."_

_"What's that mean?"_

_"It's quiet. Cold, almost. You wouldn't want to be in something as cramped as an Arwing for too long in space."_

_"Why not?"_

_"Space is big, Fox, it's--"_

_"How big?"_

_"…Really big, son. It's so hugely, vastly, mind-bogglingly big that you, me, even this PLANET is just a small, tiny speck in all of it. Hundreds of galaxies with billions of stars, and a speck on one in a blink: That's us, lost in space. Out there, there's just so much nothing that it's kind of scary sometimes."_

_"You get scared sometimes, Dad?"_

_"Everyone does, Fox. Even me. It's whether or not we let it control us that matters."_

_"So why do you do it?"_

_"Do what?"_

_"Daaaaadddd…you know…why do you go up there if it's so scary?"_

_"Because, Fox, sometimes there's other things that matter more than fear. I can help people up there. And, sometimes, when you don't let something stop you, just because it scares you, you can laugh at it. Some people say it's stupid, and sometimes they might be right, but it's as I said: You can't let fear control you, Fox."_

_"You don't get lonely up there?"_

_"Well, that's what I've got my wing mates for. Peppy's always there for me, to help me when things get tough. Even Pigma helps out…in his own way, I guess…they help when bad things happen, whether it's space pirates or just plain loneliness. That's why we have people that we trust and love. It's not just them, either. You help, too."_

_"How do I help?"_

_"It's hard to be lonely when I've got a kid as great as you waiting for me to come home. All of that space, all of that nothing, doesn't really matter when, somewhere in that big old nowhere, I've got you, Fox."_

_"…Is mommy somewhere up there, too, Dad?"_

_"…Yeah, Fox…Mommy's up there, too. And me knowing that I've got to make you into someone she'd be proud of…that's her way of being there for me."_

_"Even though mommy's gone?"_

_"…Even though she's gone, Fox."_

_"What if…what if you're gone, someday, Dad…how do I stop from being alone…?"_

_"I won't be around forever, son. That's why you always keep people close to you. Nothing hurts more than losing the people close to you, but that's a part of life. That's why you've always got to have people that you trust and love, so that they can catch you when you fall."_

_"Yeah, but you're going to be here for a long time, right, Dad?"_

_"I'm not going anywhere, son. Not for a while. And when I do, you won't need me anymore. You'll have plenty of people around that love you and care about you, that it won't feel like you're alone just because me or someone else is gone from your life."_

_"I hope you don't go for a long, long, time, Dad."_

_"Ha, me too, son."_

_"I love you, Dad."_

_"I love you, too, Fox."_

The first thing that Fox felt upon waking was the terrible feeling of being smothered. His nose was jammed, and for some reason, his mouth didn't open.

He burst up from the floor into a sitting position, his lungs repeatedly begging for sustenance, his nostrils snorting and jerking for air as he struggled to breathe through them.

After a moment or two, Fox's jaws burst open and he gasped in a massive lungful of air, his chest almost aching as it expanded to take in as much oxygen as possible.

As he tried to open his eyes to get a sense of his surroundings, Fox felt an unnatural tugging at the rims of his eyelids, as if they were fastened shut.

Fox let out a distressed moan as his hands flew to his eyelids, feeling the lines of crusty, dried mucous discharge clinging to his lashes and gluing his eyes closed. He sucked in air through his mouth, his dismay increasing his lung's demands for air as he tried to unglue his eyelids and unplug his congested nose.

Fox's respirations of barely-contained panic formed a metronomic rhythm that, in some ways, allowed him to calm down. He focused simply on the sound of his own breathing, not the fact that he couldn't open his eyes or that he couldn't breathe through his nose. Through the blackness of his closed eyes, his breaths gave him reassurance that he was still alive.

"Calm down," Fox murmured to himself, just sitting there for a few moments and collecting himself.

As his breath returned to normal, Fox felt his nasal passages opening up, an oozing glob of mucus sliding down his throat. He breathed through his uncorked nostrils, a cold rush of air stinging his now dry sinuses.

Grimacing, Fox slowly put a hand to his right eye and probed the waxy crust of rheum that glued his eyelashes together. Using the fingernails on his thumb and middle finger, he slowly pinched it out of his eyelashes, feeling the soft discharge collect under his nails. Fox worked his way across his eyelid until he was sure that he had gotten all of it, then slowly tried to open his eye once more.

The lids still felt as if they were adhered to each other for a moment, but the sensation disappeared as soon as Fox's upper and lower eyelid became completely free of each other and opened up wide.

His eye was sore and slightly itchy as it tried to focus and adjust to the lack of light in the room, and it took a few minutes for Fox to fully see the space around him.

He had slept on the scarlet carpets of the room that he'd stumbled into yesterday, after finding neither the bed nor the bathroom free of disturbing visions. Fox had thought that it would be difficult to fall asleep due to the uncomfortably hard floor under the carpets and the ancient pieces of parchment littered on top of them, however it couldn't have been too hard, given that he'd been asleep enough to dream.

Ignoring the nasty paste feeling of dried mucosa that still lingered around his open eyelid, Fox turned his attention to his still sealed left eye, carefully clearing the discharge from his eyelashes and opening his other eye. He began to flick the crusty mucus from his fingernails as he stared at the torn curtains of the room with their multiple holes, white rays of sunlight pouring in each one and making the remaining fabric glow a ghostly yellow.

With his vision returned to him, Fox's mind dwelt back on the dream that had woke him.

His father's voice had been so clear, his manner of speaking so dead-on, it was as if he'd actually been talking to Fox. It mattered little that it had only been a voice in the slumbering darkness; it was still a voice that Fox had gone without for over twelve years. In some ways, the absence of something horrific in the vision, the way that it simply scratched at the old wound that James McCloud's death left in Fox, made Fox feel even worse. The mere reminder in such a way was horrific enough.

I'm not going anywhere, son. Not for a while.

Fox pulled his feet in and gathered his hands around his knees, then closed his eyes and bowed his head.

It wasn't just his father; it was everyone in Fox's life. They had all left or been taken from him in one way or another, abandoning him and leaving a vast, black emptiness where his heart used to be.

All that was left of them were the memories that never left him regardless of how hard he tried to forget.

Fox exhaled sadly and swallowed, licking his dry lips.

Perhaps this was his fate, to die alone on a lonely planet, forgotten by everyone.

He'd stopped trying to figure out how he had arrived in this abandoned, forsaken place, or why he was seeing so many things. It was too much of a struggle to survive, to deal with the hallucinatory assault on his psyche, to try figuring all of that out.

Fox sniffled, then opened his eyes, finally noticing how scratchy and dry his mouth and throat were. He'd never felt so thirsty; he actually feared dehydrating if he didn't find water somewhere.

Fox carefully got to his feet, his knees aching as he stood to full height. His bushy red tail drooped slightly, wagging timidly with a discomforting sensation. He'd slept on it probably most of the night, and it had more than likely cramped up as a result.

Again, the pasty, dry feeling in his mouth accentuated his need for fluids.

Fox stumbled across the room, gripping the doorway of the bathroom for balance. Peering into the dark, cold, tiled room, Fox could see a little better than he could previously, noticing in the dimness a wide, dusty old turboshower with an open privacy screen taking up the opposite rear section of the bathroom. Along the same wall as the doorframe was a rather wide-looking shallow sink, above which was a peculiarly angled mirror with an intricate web of cracks shattering the image.

Fox's boots scraped across the tile as he felt his way through the darkness, and he grabbed the rim of the sink just as soon as he felt it, jerking to a stop. The entire surface of the appliance was coated in dust and grime, leaving a dirty residue on his fingers as he groped along the porcelain fixture. He finally reached the apex of the sink against the wall, feeling the cold metal of the sink's faucet. With a rising feeling of anticipation, Fox turned the handle atop the faucet, anxiously awaiting the sound of rushing water. Moments passed, and there was only silence.

Fox paused for a moment in the darkness, exhaling with a curse.

Of course the plumbing wouldn't work. Nothing else seemed to be accommodating on this desolate world.

He exited the bathroom and walked sluggishly across the bedroom's red carpets, approaching the solid, featureless stone door.

Fox had to find some form of hydration before he collapsed, and he was all too happy to leave the room anyway.

Nothing good had happened here.

A light press of the glowing blue panel against the wall was all that it took to induce the stone door to slide upwards into the ceiling and grant Fox access to the hallway.

As he sauntered out into the bare, empty corridor, Fox gave a cautious look to the hallway's dead end, where he'd seen Slippy and Amanda's mutilated corpses lying so realistically against the walls. The visions of his amphibian friends dead and mauled had yet to return, the entire hallway appearing vacant of the distressing sight.

It was a slow walk down the hallway, the dust floating in the air making it difficult to tell just how long the corridor extended.

Fox was almost surprised when he came to the end of the hallway, finding a set of stairs leading up and one leading down. He wasted no time traveling down the metal stairwell, journeying towards the ground. Fox was thankful for the windows at each landing, he didn't want to have to imagine just how hard it would be to get down the stairs in his condition and in the dark without falling.

Fox's sense of time was somewhat off, but he was still relatively sure that he hadn't traveled down the stairs too long before reaching the ground. It seemed like merely the blink of an eye to descend to the ground level.

Fox noticed a red door with some writing on it in some indecipherable language on the wall directly in front of the stairs, and on the wall to his right a blank black door. Seeing the line of sunlight seeping into the stairwell from under the red door, Fox decided that it contained the better chance of getting him where he needed to go.

He pushed forward on the heavy door, swinging it open slowly and walking out into a quiet, sun-drenched street with buildings at either side.

Fox traveled slowly into the middle of the street and looked around for a moment or two at the metropolitan canyon surrounding him. As far as his eyes could see, not a single thing moved on the street or in the hundreds of windows in the dozens of buildings around him. Not a single sign of life reared its head for him to see, nor was there any sound aside from the occasional whisperings of the forlorn wind.

Up in the sky above him, the sun beat down on the ground with warm, yellow light.

How long have I been asleep? Fox thought as he shielded his eyes from the sun.

From the look of things, it had to have been nearing midday.

He vaguely remembered the emergency beacon in his jacket, which could at least tell him the time since the crash.

As Fox reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, he noticed a distinctive set of three claw marks torn into the side of the white fabric. He paused and pulled his hand out of his pocket, grasping the borders of the pilot's jacket, then ran his fingers across the jagged tears.

What did that…and when? Fox questioned himself once again.

An eerie feeling crawled up his spine, and the fur on his neck and tail started to bristle as Fox began to get a feeling that he was being watched.

Fox looked from side to side once more, and again the vacant buildings and empty streets offered him no answers.

Regardless, Fox began to consider the idea of whether or not he was truly alone on this planet. During that period of time, just after the Arwings crash that Fox couldn't remember, maybe something caused these rips in his jacket.

Maybe that same thing also, somehow, gave him these visions.

Fox cautiously reached into his breast pocket as he walked down the streets, pulling out the cylindrical emergency beacon with it's glowing red button on top.

"Display activation timer," Fox commanded.

The emergency beacon obeyed, it's miniaturized holoprojector glowing to life and displaying a set of glowing blue three-dimensional numbers and letters in front of him, counting upwards by the second:

**Activation Time: 21:37:06**

Almost twenty-four hours had passed since the crash. Fox must've slept for more than twelve of them, at least.

"Deactivate timer display," Fox intoned, watching the hologram fade away.

Fox slipped the beacon back into his pocket, glancing over his shoulder as he continued down the streets, unable to shake the subconscious feeling that, somehow, something was following him.

Fox returned his gaze forward, looking askance from side to side as his boots scraped across the dusty stone of the streets.

A glance to his right caught his attention as the sight of a rhythmic motion appeared just out of the corner of his eye.

Fox turned his head in the direction of the movement, and saw in a shady alley between two multistory buildings a stairwell leading down below the street. Reflecting upon the stone steps and faintly upon the walls of the alley surrounding the hole that the stairs led into was the distinct shimmering effect of light being refracted by a large amount of water.

There we go, Fox thought as a relieved half-smile crossed his face.

Putting his suspicions of being surveilled in the back of his mind, Fox's mad thirst became front and center as he jogged out of the street and into the alley, marching brusquely down the steps, hearing his footfalls echo slightly as he entered the dim underground chamber.

He found himself in an empty ferroconcrete chamber, unlit save for the powerful display lights at the bottom of a wide, deep pool of water that dominated the entire room. Fox sighed with contented alleviation, looking upwards and thanking no one in particular.

He swiftly approached the edge, getting down on all fours and peering into the enormous reservoir.

Because of the bright blue lights at the bottom and sides of the pool, Fox could barely see his reflection in the water save for the slightest ghostly outline of a scruffy, tired red fox with rounded, wedge-shaped ears staring back up at him from the water.

Why this big pool of clean water was here was something that Fox neither knew nor really cared about; on a planet as unforgiving as this, Fox was willing to take what he could get.

The faint yet distinct aroma of chemical disinfectants emanating from the water led Fox to think that the whole thing could've been some sort of underground swimming pool of sorts, however the sight of a series of underground pumps hidden in a corner at the bottom of the pool made the case for an industrial or drinking water reservoir.

Either way, Fox was satisfied that the water was both free of contamination and safe to drink.

He lowered his muzzle to the water's surface, opening his mouth and extending his tongue, lapping up the water with a characteristic sploosh-sploosh-sploosh sound.

Cool, quenching refreshment flooded into his mouth and down his throat with every gulp of H2O, soaring from his mouth to his esophagus that he barely noticed the water's bland chemical taste.

Once his tongue and the inside of his mouth were properly wet again, Fox began to take notice of the water's blatantly distilled flavor. It clearly wasn't meant to be drunk.

Fox was relatively sure that it wasn't toxic, but it probably wouldn't be wise to drink too much of the stuff. There was likely some form of sanitizer added to the water that could make him sick, or the water was distilled to the point that it didn't offer any of the minerals his body would need to function in the long run.

Still, it served its purpose. Fox had never thought he'd be so grateful to be properly hydrated.

After taking a short breath, Fox lowered his muzzle into the water, his mouth and nose feeling comfortably cool and moisturized as he took in one last gulp of liquid.

He then rolled over on his back and stared at the ceiling, watching the shimmering refractions of the water's ripples that the display lights projected upon the ferroconcrete.

Fox closed his eyes, feeling tired, and licked his wet muzzle.

Instantly, something was off about the whole thing.

The water soaking the fur around his mouth no longer tasted like water, instead possessing the distinct tang of Redwall Rum, his liquor of choice.

As Fox opened his eyes in shock and confusion, he found that, instead of the ferroconcrete floors bordering the underground pool, he was lying down on the faux nerfskin upholstery of a fully reclined starship captain's chair.

Rather than the empty, featureless surroundings of the underground chamber, Fox found himself inside the disorganized, cluttered and flashy bridge of the Great Fox. Directly in front of him, at the forward end of the bridge, was the huge panoramic window that served as the Great Fox's 'eyes', while all around him were the various workstations with their advanced computer and holographic equipment. In the corner of the bridge, almost insignificant looking in comparison to the showy, advanced technological displays all around it, was ROB-64's recharge station and USC socket from which the robot could single-handedly operate the entire starship. The station was currently unoccupied, and Fox was the only one on the bridge.

He couldn't really move for some reason; minor shifts of his eyes, head, and arms were all that he could really manage. Upon trying to mutter an out loud profanity to emphasize his confusion, Fox found that he could not speak.

It was as if he was merely bearing witness to this event; interaction, in terms of anything but looking, appeared virtually impossible.

Fox was able to move his head inwards towards his body, seeing his hand resting on the stomach of his green flight suit, grasping a near-empty glass bottle of Redwall Rum.

Moving all on it's own, Fox's arm raised the bottle towards the ceiling as his mouth suddenly, involuntarily slurred the words, "Here's to you, Krystal…Happy Birthday!"

Just as he was midway through the word 'Birthday', the bottle slipped out of his hand, dropping to the floor and shattering into thousands of pieces on the durasteel floor of the bridge.

Beyond his own control, Fox blurted out a drunken giggle, his gaze drifting down to the floor where, amongst the shards of glass from the broken bottle lay another empty bottle of Redwall Rum and a decorative platinum bracelet engraved with intricate, curving designs and bordered on both sides with bluish purple stones.

Had he possessed the ability to show it on his face, Fox would've frowned and flinched in shame and sadness as he understood what was going on. It was Krystal's birthday.

The one after she left.

It was the night that Falco left, too.

As if on cue, the automatic doors to the bridge slid open and in stepped a lanky, rugged looking blue falcon of twenty nine, wearing a white Team StarFox pilot's jacket, specially tailored to fit his wide, wing-like hands, over a sleeveless auburn brown flight suit tailored to accommodate his tail feathers. The azure plumage of his head was smoothed back in the front but slightly ruffled at the back, giving him a rather rugged, windswept look. Falco Lombardi's intense, icy blue eyes were only accentuated by the passionate crimson color of the feathers forming an almond shape around his sockets.

Falco's boots thumped along the durasteel floor as he strolled into the bridge, pausing as his eyes fell on Fox and the pieces of broken bottle on the floor.

"Heyyy…" Falco croaked warmly with his smooth, tough voice, "What's up wit' tha' party? An' why wasn't I invited, huh?".

Due to his hard beak, Falco didn't smile like other mammals did. Only the corners of his mouth ever turned up or down, his eyes and forehead expressing the rest of his emotions. From the way that Falco's beak fell open slightly and the way that his eyes narrowed as he talked, Falco was much less thrilled than his voice might've implied.

As Falco got closer and his eyes locked onto Krystal's bracelet on the floor, they widened somewhat in surprise as he let off the vague sort grimace that his beak produced.

"Oh…shit…" Falco muttured, rolling his eyes at the ceiling, then looking back at Fox and saying, "It's that day already?"

"Hey, Falco, you're just in time!" Fox's mouth spoke without his permission, "I was just about to sing Krystal the birthday song. Now we both can do it!"

"C'mon, Foxie, cut it out," Falco encouraged, looking out the bridge's window, "How 'bout 'ya find me some 'a that Vino Wine I know we got saved up, open up a bottle and then we'll go watch tha' G-Zero race on tha' hi-def downstairs. Whaddaya say?"

The corners of Falco's beak were forced into a smile, a wide and warm grin of encouragement that was very different from the sardonic smirk that Falco usually displayed.

Inside, Fox felt touched by the obvious amount of effort Falco was putting up in his attempt to take his mind off of Krystal, knowing how rare it was for Falco to show any emotion save for cool disdain or egotistic sarcasm.

It tugged at his heart knowing what the inevitable conclusion of this whole thing was, regardless of how it might play out.

"Oh, I'm real sorry, Falco, but…but what about Krystal? It's _her_ birthday… and she left _me_ a present! Look!" Fox exclaimed in an intoxicated stupor, pointing down at the bracelet and then at an empty computer terminal chair across the room, "What am I supposed to do for her? I don't even think I went _shoppin'_… am I a dick or what?!"

"Fox," Falco hissed, losing his tenderness in a wave of frustration, "Ya' know Krystal's not there. Krystal's _gone_, Fox."

"Shhhh…" Fox whispered loudly, putting a hand to the side of his mouth, "I _know_. She doesn't know it yet, and I think it'd be pretty crappy of us to tell her that on her _birthday_, don't you think, Falco?"

Falco rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, stepping back and looking up at the ceiling once again, shaking his head.

"Ya' know, sometimes I don't even know why I gotta keep tryin' wit' you. You pretty much made your choice on poutin' like a little girl, no matter what I keep doin', and it's not like Peppy and Slippy are around any more to help me knock some sense inta' ya'. Don't even get me started on how borin' it's gotten around here, or how tight we're gettin' when it comes to cash lately. The only reason I stayed wit' you guys to begin with was 'cause 'a tha' cash and tha' thrills, and that's dryin' up pretty damn fast 'round here. I dunno, I might just skip out," Falco retorted with an indifferent shrug.

"You know how many time's you done that? Like twice!" Fox slurred in argument, holding up four fingers.

"_Once_, ya' shit-faced dumb ass." Falco corrected, smirking coolly, "An' I only came back 'cause ya' needed me ta' help ya' smoke Andross. _Again_. But he ain't here, so, what reason I got ta' stay?"

"I _told_ you…" Fox hiccupped, "We already had this talk…didn't we? We all know that it's just an _act_, Falco! Ya' big softie! You put on that big tough guy thing so people don't start thinkin' that you're actually kind of sweet on all of us. Go on, Falco, come on, you like us…"

Falco's eyes closed a bit longer than they should've for a blink, and the corners of his mouth turned down. He paused a moment, trying to think of what to say.

"Whaddaya mean, _us_, Foxie? There's no _us_, it's just you an' me, remember? It's kinda funny, ya' know, wit' about thirty ounces a' eighty proof, ya' can somehow see through my _act_, if ya' wanna call it that, but ya' can't seem ta' remember that… _I'm_ all ya' got, Foxie," Falco responded, his tone of voice loosing some of it's coolness, slipping into a much less reserved pitch, especially near the end.

"Hey, Falco…tell me somethin'…" Fox crooned, his head drooping backwards into the upholstery of his seat, "If you're really only with us… If you were always with us just for the money, or…or for the thrills…why are you still here?"

"'Cause _you're_ all _I _got, ya' stupid FUCK!!" Falco roared, loosing his cool, his eyes glaring with anger, "It took me years ta' get it through my head that _you_ 'n _Slippy_ n' _the ol' man_ were all I eva' HAD! An' look at what you done now! Ya' let Peppy leave an' ya pushed Slippy away, an' now all I got is _you_ and ya' fuckin' self pity!!"

"Hey, you try getting dumped…" Fox shrugged casually, defensively, "…and not getting down on yourself."

"Shut tha' FUCK up Fox!!" Falco bellowed, waving his arm angrily, "Stop makin' excuses an' LOOK at what ya' fuckin' doin' to yourself!"

Silence took up the next few moments as Falco breathed hard and caught his breath as Fox drunkenly went with the flow.

"Ya' know what, man?" Falco snapped, "Women are killers. And Krystal? She's killin' you. And I can't fuckin' stand it anymore."

"What…" Fox blurted in confusion, "…what're you talkin' about…Falco?"

"If you can't forgive yourself, I ain't gonna watch you flush ya' life down the damn toilet," Falco growled bitterly.

"What choice do you have, Falco…?" Fox chuckled as if it was one big joke, "I thought I was all you had…"

Falco's beak opened as he scoffed, and his eyes glared daggers of disgust.

"Fuck you," Falco spat, emphasizing every syllable and turning on his heel without another word.

The automatic doors of the bridge slid open and Falco stormed through them, slipping out of sight.

"Hey, Falco! You didn't answer!" Fox called, not getting up from the chair, "…What 'cha gonna do?"

There was no reply.

The doors of the bridge slid closed, and Fox's eyes slid shut as he passed out.

When he opened his eyes to see the ferroconcrete ceiling of the underground pool chamber above him with it's shimmering light ripples, there was no shocked jerking awake as he had so many times before. His eyes slid open slowly, sadly.

Fox lay on the ground for several more minutes, putting a hand on his forehead and clenching his teeth.

_I was wrong before, wasn't I?_ Fox thought.

_No one abandoned me or got taken from me, only to leave me alone. Not really._

_The ones I lost, like Dad, I can't let go of._

_The ones that abandoned me, like Falco and Krystal, only did it because of what I did._

_I let them leave._

_I pushed them away._

_Maybe it's not my fate, to die alone on a lonely planet. Maybe it's my punishment. Maybe it's what I deserve._

Fox slowly got to his feet, looking back at the calm pool of water glowing an eerie blue.

He then took off back up the stairs, as fast as he could, running up to the surface and up towards the light of day. He had to get away from this place.

The brightness of the streets was slightly overwhelming to Fox's green eyes as he dashed out of the alley and continued down the street, the guilty chill of self-loathing still gripping his spine and throat. He looked down at the ground and continued down the street as the vacant buildings on both sides looked down on him emptily.

His previous thoughts still echoed in his head, accusing him of his various crimes against those he loved and sentencing him to a painful, pitiful end on this faraway rock.

Fox's eyes darted over to his right hip, where the black grip of his Cornerian ArmsCor EE-40 blaster pistol poked out of its holster. He'd heavily modified the blaster for a much higher firing rate (more comparable to a repeating blaster than a regular pistol) and with more advanced heat shielding to resist overheating from multiple shots. The trade off was that the blaster bolts were much less powerful than normal, requiring several shots to incapacitate or kill an opponent. Fox could, however, change the power settings to charge the blaster up for a few large, lethal shots.

_Do it_, a voice in the back of Fox's mind whispered, _Blow your fucking brains out. You're going to die on this planet anyway. Just put yourself out of your misery. Besides, no one's going to miss you. Just kill yourself._

Fox stopped walking, his eyes locked on the blaster's handle.

His right hand twitched unconsciously, as if it was itching to grab something.

Fox's breathing slowed as the seductive curves of the blaster's plastic and metal handgrip hypnotized and called to him. His eyes widened as he found himself unable to think about anything but the gun, so close and easy.

So far, it was the only offer of escape that he had.

Fox could leave it all behind; this planet, these hallucinations, even his guilt and shame would all go away.

All that it required was the pull of a trigger.

_Kill yourself, McCloud_, the voice in his head growled softly.

Fox's fingers shivered as sweat began to form under his fur. Even though he'd just drank, Fox's mouth felt dry as the grave once again.

A part of him was horrified at the idea, mentally kicking and screaming at the concept, but still Fox was unable to move on, due to the fact that another part of him could think of nothing but the blessed release the voices in his head promised that death would bring.

_KILL YOURSELF,_ the wraith in his skull commanded, much less hushed this time.

Fox's breath began to falter as his right hand began to move towards the pistol grip, seemingly all on its own.

His index finger brushed the butt of the grip, shocking him with alertness that gave Fox power over his hand again, and he jerked it away from the gun in alarm.

The beating of Fox's heart reached a dance-able tempo, and he scowled and squinted his eyes shut, determined not to look at the blaster.

"Shut up," Fox whispered to the voice.

_KIIIILLLLLLLLLL YOURRRRSEEEEELLLLFFF…_the voice echoed.

Grinding his teeth once, trying to move his head to the left, as far away as it could turn from the blaster, Fox growled, "Shut. Up."

_I've been looking forward to this day…to see you again…Fox McCloud_, the voice boomed in his brain, changing from subtle and nondescript to a rolling, deep, rich voice with an exotic accent, _KILL YOURSELF, FOX MCCLOUD._

Fox shuddered, putting both hands up and blocking his ears, as if that would drown out the sound. He still refused to open his eyes.

"Stop it," Fox hissed to no one in particular.

_KILLYOURSELFKILLYOURSELFKILLYOURSELFKILLYOURSELF! KILL YOURSELF! KILL YOURSELF!_ the wraith chanted, its orders reverberating throughout his cranium.

"SHUT UP!!" Fox bellowed, craning his head back and screaming at the sky, finally opening his eyes as the sun's yellow rays blinded him.

His throat feeling raw as he yelled, Fox at last felt some power returning to his legs, and he took off running up the street like a madman, hoping that he could somehow outrun the voices.

Fox's boots pounded and scraped into the ground as he sprinted down the street, kicking up small patches of dust in sync with his tired gasps for air.

His arms pumped forward, fists tightened and biceps stretched taut as he approached an intersection.

Fox wasn't really looking where he was going; he didn't really care, his entire thought process dominated by the terror gripping his brain from the constant demands for his suicide.

He whipped around the corner of the two streets, not noticing the massive circular network of cracks in this new street, nor the small hole in the street from which all of the cracks originated.

Instead, Fox dashed blindly forward, planting his feet into the already weak and unstable road surface, too preoccupied by his fear to hear the rumbling crumble of the pavement giving way under his boots.

The first instant that Fox even realized something was wrong was when the entire spider's web of cracks collapsed into a massive, gaping hole in the road that swallowed Fox up.

He let out a small, hysterical yell as he tumbled downward with a meteor shower of chunks of road surface.

It was not a long trip downwards; Fox barely had time to inhale a breath after his yelp of surprise before hitting the ferroconcrete floor of the underground tunnel on his left hip.

A wave of pain shot through Fox's entire left side as the breath was knocked out of him, and he wheezed out a grunt of pain as a stray piece of debris struck his upper arm fiercely.

He couldn't be sure that his leg was broken, but it sure felt like it might have been.

Gulping and heaving for air, Fox looked up in confusion at the hole in the road that he'd fallen through, only seeing the bright yellow light of the sun shining through. The sunlight bore into his pupils and overloaded his eyes, and he shut his eyes and looked away.

Upon opening his eyes once again, Fox noticed that he was neither lying down nor in the tunnel any longer.

The bright light of the sun had been replaced by the piercing white luminescence of several high-powered indoor display lights mounted from rigging on the ceiling that rounded the entire perimeter.

The underground tunnel had been replaced by what appeared to be an operating theater, with several ascending rows of stands encircling a central space with a surgical operating table, over which was a bright examination light. Several figures were sitting in the stands or leaning against the wall at the perimeter of the operating space, along with a lone figure strapped down to the table.

Viewing the whole thing like a holorecording, Fox was unable to interact or move; only able to see what was shown right in front of him. Even then, however, Fox knew several of the figures in the room.

All around, guarding the exits and other spaces in the room, were several soldiers in maroon military outfits. For the most part, all of the soldiers were apes, however Fox could distinctly make out the black beak of a crow and the twin curving horns of a goat poking out from the black ballistic helmets of two of the soldiers. Their rusty maroon, almost blood red colors, marked them as troops of the Imperial Venomian Army.

In the front row of the stands was a brown female cat with a scar at the corner of her mouth, a male alligator with several prosthetic teeth, and an aging orangutan with several bald patches amongst his faded orange fur, all of them wearing maroon officer's uniforms with several bars on their chests and shoulders.

Behind the officers was a quartet of male pilots that Fox knew _very_ well.

The first was a lanky and somewhat blank-faced chimpanzee in a yellow flight suit, attempting to solve a Fichinan puzzle box and failing miserably. Fox would've recognized the ape as Andrew Oikonny just by the quiet whimpers and whines he gave off as he tried again and again in vain to solve the puzzle.

Sitting next to Oikonny, gorging himself gluttonously on a massive bucket of popcorn, was a corpulent, beady-eyed pig in a pink and white flight suit that could barely contain its wearer's massive girth. Pigma Dengar's vulgar snorts had always disgusted Fox, even as a pup, and they had continued to mark the traitor's speech all the way up until his assimilation by the Aparoids.

Beside Pigma, wearing a short white coat and gloves over blue coveralls was the thin form of Leon Powalski. The creepy little chameleon was leaned forward, his spidery, gloved hands twitching nervously as his bulging eyes locked on the operating table with a look of gleeful anticipation like a kid at the circus.

Already, Fox noticed something odd about the entire group.

They all looked much younger than Fox remembered them. They looked even younger than he remembered them when StarFox had faced the original StarWolf a little over eight years ago. Neither Leon nor Andrew could've been above the age of eighteen. Pigma looked a bit more like Fox remembered him as a teammate of his father's. Dengar had put on more than a few pounds by the time he flew a Wolfen against Team StarFox.

Confused, Fox focused on the final member of the four.

His arms crossed, wearing a light brown duster coat over a black and white flight suit and a short red scarf tied around his neck, was a scruffy-looking young wolf with a black eye patch over his left eye. Wolf O'Donnell did not look happy to be present, wearing a look on his face that could be interpreted as either bored indifference or mild disgust.

Wolf's appearance looked the most surprising out of all of them. Fox had always remembered Wolf the most out of all of the StarWolf pilots, due to their constant rivalry. Though Wolf was only a year or two older than him, Fox always thought of the StarWolf leader as being much bigger, and older than Fox in ways different from age.

Here, however, Wolf couldn't have been a day over sixteen.

There was a type of naïve arrogance that this Wolf emanated, a kind of blind confidence that Fox didn't quite remember Wolf ever really possessing.

For some reason, Fox had a very strong feeling of déjà vu in the back of his mind as he looked at Wolf, as if there was something about Wolf that he was supposed to remember.

Fox's feelings of confusion began to be replaced by a heightening sense of dread and an intuition of what was to come.

Fox had a thought of what he might soon see, but he daren't even think of it too much for fear of making it come true.

His view of the much younger StarWolf Team was replaced by a sight of the central space, where a middle-aged chimpanzee sat in a heavily decorated, throne like chair, carefully watching the operating table and the figure held down upon it.

He wore a completely black military style uniform with a stiff collar that nearly covered his entire neck. It was featureless except for the thin split of a zipper directly down the center of the uniform's top. The chimpanzee's dark hair was very managed and restrained, combed back on the top of his head and straightened into a sage-like goatee and beard on his chin. His skin seemed unusually dark, wrinkled and almost purple like a prune. The flesh of his gnarled hands was no different, with a sharp-looking black nail on the tip of each finger. The ape's eyes were an unnatural, vibrant orange color, like molten lava. Above his right eye, snaking upwards like a crack in his face was a jagged two-pronged scar.

The sight of the brilliant, maniacal, malevolent Dr. Andross, the would-be tyrant of the Lylat System, filled Fox with equal parts rage and fear.

In all of Fox's previous encounters with the monster, he had always faced gigantic floating manifestations of the self-proclaimed emperor, be they robotic or biologically engineered avatars.

It was somewhat unsettling to see Andross as a normal, humanoid being, his evil magnified by the humbleness of his form.

As Andross stared pensively at the operating table, his lips curved into a sadistic smile, Fox was finally allowed to see the prisoner in the center of the room, confirming the worst fears that he had held all along:

Strapped to the operating table, a visage of stubborn determination belying his tattered body was James McCloud.

His father's fur was matted with sweat and dried blood, the yellow scarf around his neck and the old green and navy blue Team StarFox jacket torn and ripped in several places. James' black flight suit had several tatters and rips in it as well, along with several dark spots around his chest that indicated parts where blood had soaked in and dried. His trademark sunglasses were gone, exposing his blue eyes underneath.

The eyes were absent of fear, instead adopting a simple preparedness to accept whatever might happen to him, regardless of the consequences.

At that moment, Fox had no greater desire than to stop seeing this, right now.

He'd gladly relive any of the horrible things he'd seen previously, from Krystal's spontaneous combustion to Falco's bitter goodbye.

Anything but this.

Fox's worst nightmares had been the sight of just what Andross might've done to his father, and the vividness of it all made the current vision more awful than a lifetime of nocturnal terrors.

His prayers went unanswered, and the vision continued as a white-clad ape wheeled in a small cart with a collection of various instruments, surgical tools, needles, and bottles of fluid. Every thing on the cart had at least a sharp point, a warning label, or a power source.

The ape reverently approached Andross at his throne with a paper box of surgical gloves and an apron, kneeling down and presenting them to his emperor like a living sacrifice.

Andross carefully slipped a surgical glove onto each hand, then tied the apron around his black uniform and approached the operating table, his boots clicking on the floors and echoing as the room went silent.

Andross stopped at the table and glanced at James McCloud, then carefully examined all of the tools at his disposal on the cart, running his thin, slender fingers over every object gingerly.

A subtle smile crept across Andross' face as his hands contacted each of the tools, picking them up and examining them as if choosing one, then moving on to pick another.

He seemed to take joy in the slight, barely noticeable flinch that James McCloud gave at every stop that Andross' hands made.

"If you were just going to grope your tools up, why'd you go to all the trouble of getting me out of my cell?" James McCloud's voice enunciated, filling the theater.

Fox would've savored the sound of his father's voice, had it not been for the circumstances.

Andross stopped, his fiery orange eyes slowly shifting towards James' face.

"Commander James McCloud," Andross rumbled with his deep, rich, exotic voice, "The famed adventurer. Even in the face of agony and death, always defiant."

"Keeps things interesting," James shrugged, almost as if he and Andross were having a friendly conversation, "Imagine how boring this whole thing would be if I just rolled over and begged for my life. It would be too easy for you. What would you do with the rest of your day?"

"James McCloud, why do you bring this on yourself?" Andross asked in a tone that made the question obviously rhetorical, "If you had only the vision to see that which is coming. Your comrade, Pigma Dengar did. He knows that the future lies with me. You could save your life by merely submitting to my will. I only ask for your knowledge of the Cornerian military's intelligence concerning my operations. I only ask for that which Pigma Dengar has not provided. Instead, you dishonor me with your stubbornness, which will only cause more lives to be lost when I invade all of Lylat."

"I've never been all that great at submitting," James smirked unsteadily, "Especially when it's to a damn dirty, stinkin' piece of ape trash like you."

Andross' eyebrow raised slightly in what could've been disappointment or amusement, and he calmly looked back at the cart, picking up a rather large high-voltage shock prod.

Pressing a button, he activated it, a crackling blue arc of electricity sparking between the two electrodes, and without another word he plunged it into James McCloud's stomach.

A series of sparks coincided with loud screams of pain as his father began to spasm from the electric shock. A moment more of James' screaming passed before Andross pulled the prod away and allowed the prisoner to fall limp on the table. In the stands, Pigma gave off a snorting laugh, whilst Leon licked his chops with his long, slimy tongue. The grimace dominating Wolf's face hadn't changed, however he exhaled softly as his remaining eye shifted elsewhere.

If Fox had been able to, he would've scratched his own eyes out just to prevent himself from seeing this. The fact that he couldn't do that, or anything besides simply watching helplessly, made it even worse.

He felt just like a pup of fifteen again, helpless to do anything but endure the wait for his father to return from his fateful mission on Venom.

As the ruckus in the audience died, Andross smirked down on James McCloud as he set the shock prod back on the cart.

"Your disrespect will gain you _nothing_, James McCloud," Andross growled, "I must admit, however, I admire your endurance. I have never heard of a prisoner requesting extra torture to spare his friend pain."

"You…think I'm gonna let Peppy hog all of the attention?" James panted, gritting his teeth, "I'm having a blast here."

"You are merely providing a reprieve," Andross mentioned, "When you die, we will simply have to devote all of our attention to Peppy Hare, to extract the information that you are so reluctant to provide. Your sacrifice is for nothing, James McCloud."

"That's what you think," James retorted, "Because things like you only think of yourself."

"Try, perhaps, taking your own advice, James McCloud," Andross argued, "When my forces invade Corneria, what is to stop me from destroying your son, Fox McCloud? Your submission could do more than save him. I could make you the governor of Corneria, and your son it's prince."

"And answer to you?" James replied, "I think I'd rather die. And I'm sure Fox would, too."

Andross' scowl deepened as he picked up a small branding iron and a handheld fusion torch. The ape clicked the fusion torch on, it's small, blue jet of flame shooting out of the barrel and enveloping the end of the branding iron, quickly heating it until the metal turned as orange as the fiend's eyes.

"You sadden me, James McCloud," Andross sighed with a shake of his head, "As I am generous, so am I wrathful. I will erase the very memory of you, your family, and your StarFox Team from the histories. No one will ever know."

"They'll know," James McCloud hissed, "As long as there's at least one free person in the galaxy, they'll know."

"I respect your optimism, given the circumstances," Andross snarled in reply.

He then grabbed James' right hand by the wrist, holding it down as he struggled and grunted in resistance. Andross pressed the end of the branding iron to James McCloud's lower arm, creating a small hissing sound and tiny wisps of smoke as flesh and fur burnt under the hot iron.

Again, James' screams filled the room, enveloping Fox like a wave of pure agony. Fox begged for it to stop.

Andross pulled the branding iron back, revealing the upside down 'A' symbol of the Venomian Empire of Andross burned into James McCloud's flesh.

Pigma once again erupted into a flurry of guffaws, and Leon rubbed his hands together, stealing a handful of popcorn from Pigma's bucket. Even Andrew looked up from his puzzle box to watch.

Letting out a grunt of pain with every breath, James gritted his teeth and growled, "Andross…do you really…expect me to talk to you? Do…you think I'll tell you…_anything_?"

Andross' simian mouth developed a deeper scowl. The tyrannical emperor let out an exhalation, and then he gave a firm half-smile as his eyes hardened in resentment.

"No, James McCloud," Andross whispered tenderly, "I expect you to _suffer_. And I expect you to die. That is all that I ask of you."

"It's about…damn time," James breathed.

"I think I am going to take joy in _exterminating_ your son," Andross sneered.

"You know what…_I _think…?" James panted, resisting his pain, "I think … someday … he's gonna kill _you_."

Andross' only response was a glare of respect-tinted hatred as he lifted a scalpel up and began to close in on James' face.

Fox prayed for the hallucination to end.

Please, he'd go through anything but watch this anymore.

Almost instantly, Fox's surroundings changed, and it appeared that he'd gotten his wish.

His father was no longer the one on the operating table.

Now, it was Fox.

The black rubber straps at his armpits, wrists, and ankles held Fox down to the operating table, cutting off his circulation painfully as the sensation of actually having a body of his own returned to him.

His heart stopped in terror as he looked up at Andross looming over him with the scalpel.

"I've been waiting for you," Andross announced, "Fox McCloud."

Andross' surprisingly strong hands grabbed Fox's muzzle hard, holding his mouth shut as he brought the scalpel at the left corner of Fox's lips, the cold blade feeling like it was making a cut just by touching his flesh.

Fox forced his eyes closed as the blade sank into his face, the frigid steel of the scalpel tugging at his muscles and leaving a trail of sharp pain as it sliced his cheeks in half and gave him an ever widening, unnatural smile.

Fox tried to scream, but couldn't open his mouth with Andross' hands holding his jaw shut.

The only result was a loud, muffled moan of pain that Fox belted out as the scalpel reached the end of his left cheekbones, having completely bisected his left cheek.

Fox continued to scream and moan in pain, unable to fully vocalize it with his jaw held shut, as his own coppery tasting blood filled his mouth and began to slide down his throat. The disgusting warmness, the amazingly hot temperature of all of the blood in his mouth, made Fox feel like he was going to be sick.

He kept his eyes closed as he felt the scalpel going to work on his right cheek, and he tried to beg for mercy, still unable to because of his securely-shut jaws. Fox actually thought he heard a ripping sound as his flesh was torn with surgical precision by the laser-sharpened scalpel. Even more blood was flowing into Fox's mouth, so much that he thought he was going to drown in it even though he didn't have any more cheeks to hold the blood in. He felt the heat and the wetness of it as the blood flowed down his face and drenched the fur on the back of his head and neck, soaking into his back and his coat and his flight suit.

His blood was everywhere.

Andross' hands released their grip on Fox's muzzle, and he opened his eyes in order to beg forgiveness, in order to offer submission to Andross finally.

Andross had won.

Instead, however, Fox found that the person standing over him was not Andross.

It was Falco.

In his blue-feathered hands was not a scalpel, but an open bottle of Redwall Rum.

In Fox's pained confusion, he thought that, maybe, just maybe, he'd been saved somehow. The depressed, frustrated look in Falco's avian eyes told Fox that he had not.

"If you can't forgive yourself, I ain't gonna watch you flush ya' life down the damn toilet," Falco prosecuted.

With that, Falco poured the bottle of Redwall Rum onto Fox's face. The alcohol smell soaked Fox's fur and got into his eyes, stinging him as the alcohol burned his eyeballs. The rum soaked into the massive, open cuts in Fox's cheeks, lighting his whole face on fire as he screamed out in anguish.

Fox jolted and threw himself against the straps holding him down, unable to get free.

His face and eyes still burnt and stung, but the effect was surprisingly short. He kept his eyes closed.

"I'm sorry, Falco!!" Fox sobbed, "Please!! Help me! Don't leave me!!"

Fox opened his eyes, only to see, instead of Falco, dark-eyed Krystal standing over him at the operating table.

Fox's cuts still bled and they still stung along with his eyes, but somehow Fox was still stunned by Krystal's appearance.

"Do you love me now?" Krystal whispered softly.

Fox sank even further into desperation and despair, knowing full well what was going to happen as Krystal leaned in close and pressed her lips to his.

The instant they touched, Fox could feel the indescribable heat of Krystal's lips, so hot that they blistered Fox's very skin, making them feel like his lips were being torn off.

Fox tried once more to scream with pain as his face and fur began to scorch, the cuts on his cheeks sealing as the sheer heat cauterized them.

Despite the fact that the skin on his nose was frying and sizzling with the heat, he could somehow still smell the acrid stink of his own flesh burning.

In an instant, the feeling was gone, and Fox was afraid to open his eyes for fear of what he might see.

"Krystal…", Fox wept, "I do love you. I was too scared to admit it. I need you. Please…"

The tears soaking through Fox's tightly shut eyes only stung his burnt flesh more.

After a few moments of nothing happening, Fox found the strength to open his eyes.

Standing over him, looking fully-grown and exactly as Fox last remembered him, optical implant and all, was Wolf O'Donnell.

Fox couldn't breathe, not knowing what to expect.

Wolf just smirked, then said, "It's a great day to die, ain't it, McCloud?"

Somehow, those words had a deeper meaning for Fox, as if it was trying to tell him something.

At that moment, Wolf raised his hand proceeded to blow a cloud of yellow powder into Fox's face.

Fox could just barely make out the powder's stale, flowery smell as it stung his eyes and he was once again forced to shut them.

Fox's eyes stopped stinging, and he opened them up wide.

The first thing he noticed was the absence of the horrible pain from before.

No longer was his fur and flesh burnt, nor were his cuts soaked in alcohol, nor were there any cuts in Fox's cheeks at all. At that point, Fox noticed that he was, once again in the underground tunnel that he'd plunged into seemingly so long ago.

Sitting up in bewilderment, brushing off pieces of pavement from his chest and legs, Fox breathed hard as he tried to calm himself from the previous intense vision. As painful and horrible as it was, as enlightening as it might've been, the vision had provided him with that one missing piece that Fox needed: Wolf.

_This is all his doing somehow, isn't it?_ Fox thought to himself.

Now he remembered what happened just before and after the Arwing crash. Wolf had attacked Fox, hadn't he? He'd made Fox crash onto this planet, Temple, and then they'd gotten into a fight. And then, Wolf had done…something.

That powder he'd thrown at him.

Fox might as well have snorted the stuff with the amount of it that must've gotten into his nose and eyes. It was some sort of _drug_, wasn't it? It had to be. And that was why Fox was seeing all of these hallucinations.

The anger at what Wolf had done to him boiled inside of Fox as he kicked the rest of the debris off of him and jumped to his feet in fury.

_Where the FUCK is he?_ Fox thought, his mind a raging storm of wrath, _I'll fucking KILL that son of a bitch._

"I'm right where you want me, McCloud," a deep, drawling voice growled from behind him.

Fox whipped around to face the other side of the tunnel as a rugged-looking wolf with an optical implant stepped into the spotlight of sun made from the hole in the ceiling above.

A crooked smile of carnivorous teeth widened as Wolf strode casually towards Fox.

"Why, Wolf?!" Fox demanded.

"Why not?" Wolf answered, leaping forward.

Wolf was fast, even for Wolf, his clawed hands gripping Fox's neck and slamming him up against the stone walls of the tunnel, strangling him.

Fox gasped for breath, slapping against Wolf's arms, unable to dislodge him.

As Fox's right hand went for his holster, Wolf's foot swung out and swept Fox's legs out from under him, making him slip down the wall and onto his ass hard.

Wolf kept his grip on Fox's neck, this time crouching forward and shoving one of his thighs under each armpit, blocking both of his arms from reaching down into his holster to get his gun.

As Wolf's smile grew, Fox could only see Wolf's own heavily modified blaster pistol in a holster at the right side of his waist. Unlike Fox's own blaster, Wolf had given Fox easy access to his blaster.

Vainly trying to suck in another gasp of air, Fox's left hand shot forward and grabbed the end of the blaster, yanking it out of it's holster to Wolf's total surprise.

Not even taking time to aim and fire it, Fox just shoved it forward into Wolf's neck, burying the curved bayonet on the end of the blaster pistol into his jugular vein.

Wolf let out a gurgling cry of surprise and pain as torrents of blood began to gush from his neck, spilling in a hot, red mess on Fox's lap.

The fingers around Fox's neck loosened and Wolf fell backwards onto the stone floor, dead.

Fox sat there; just breathing for a moment, then got up and looked at Wolf's corpse.

The silence of the moment only made Fox unsure as to what to do.

_If Wolf's dead, what now?_ Fox thought.

"Now the real fun begins," a voice growled.

Fox looked over to the direction of the voice, only to have his jaw drop and his blood turn to ice as Wolf walked into the light once again, from a different direction.

In his shock and confusion, Fox looked back, only to see Wolf's dead body right where it fell. And yet, in the opposite direction, was yet another Wolf approaching him, just as ready to fight.

Fox breathed hard, his eyes growing large with frenzy as pure rage and aggravation got to him, seeing Wolf's crude smile only made him want to kill him all over again.

Fox let out a roar of bloodlust as he charged forwards, scooping up a large chunk of pavement debris from the cave-in off of the ground whilst Wolf barreled to meet Fox, claws bared. Before Wolf could even swing his arms, Fox tackled the StarWolf leader squarely in the chest, shoving him into the tunnel wall and knocking him fully off balance.

As a dazed Wolf tried to push back up from the wall, Fox swung the heavy piece of debris into the side of Wolf's head, hearing a satisfying thumping sound as the debris connected with his enemy.

Wolf's head whip-lashed into the stone walls, a second blow to the other side of the head that created a slightly lower thud.

Wolf tripped and fell on his back, still alive and holding up his hands for Fox to stop.

Fox ignored him, raising the chunk of debris high over his head and bringing it down on Wolf's face, feeling the exact moment that the bones of his skull cracked.

Blood spurted from Wolf's face and his entire snout looked like it was at an odd angle, but the fact that he was still moving was too much for Fox.

Fox brought it down again, smashing it into the grey fur, watching with pleasure as one of Wolf's teeth flew out of his mouth and skittered across the floor. The hand that Wolf had been holding up to stop Fox fell limply to the floor as he lifted the asphalt chunk back up. He wouldn't have even recognized Wolf by now if it weren't for the optical implant.

The sight of Wolf's chest still moving as he breathed, no matter how slight, was enough to force Fox to smash the pavement chunk into Wolf's head one final time, hearing an almost humorous cracking pop as some part of Wolf's cranium snapped open and punctured his brain.

Sweating, breathing hard, Fox dropped the debris tablet, looking down the tunnel and spying a ladder leading up to the street.

Fox stumbled down the tunnel towards the ladder, reaching it and gripping the rusty, iron rungs. He spared a final look down the tunnel at Wolf's corpse.

_Let's see you get up from that_, Fox thought to himself.

Fox ascended the ladder, reaching a large circular metal hatch with a simple lever-style latch holding it closed. He clicked the latch open and pushed upwards, feeling the hatch rise above him and clang onto the ground. Looking around as he lifted himself up out of the underground tunnel, Fox realized that he had to be inside.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he found that he was in the middle of a large room, with a pair of stairs leading up and rounding the perimeter of the room before ending at a pair of large doors.

"Where'd ya' think you're goin'?" Wolf's gruff voice inquired from behind Fox.

With a sense of overpowering confusion and dismay, Fox turned to find Wolf approaching him, hand hovering over his holster, looking as good as new.

_What the fuck's going on here?!_ Fox thought in horror.

Not even waiting for an answer, Fox yanked his blaster pistol out of its holster, bringing it to bear on Wolf's head and firing.

The blaster kicked just slightly as the red blaster bolt seared out and struck Wolf's head, upon which it promptly exploded in a gushing splash of red.

Wolf's headless body fell to the ground without a word.

"What the fuck indeed?" The StarWolf leader called out to him, appearing from the shadows at the end of the room.

His mouth parched with dread, Fox's jaw dropped again, and he found he couldn't even lift his blaster. Instead, he just ran for the stairs, sprinting as fast as he could as he saw another Wolf O'Donnell materialize and give pursuit of him.

Fox's feet hit the stairs and he began to ascend, completely ignoring his muscles' appeals for him to slow down or his lungs' pleas for air, concerned only with escaping his immortal enemy.

_I think I've got it all figured out_, Fox thought to himself frantically, now convinced that he heard the footsteps of _four_ Wolf O'Donnells following him.

_I thought it was all in my head, maybe that I was completely losing my mind, but this I can at least make sense of. Now that I think of it, it's always made sense._

_Wolf's not one man. He's an _army_._

_Andross always was good at biotechnology. He probably wanted to make sure that he'd always have a StarWolf Team to count on. He probably made a whole production line of Wolf O'Donnell clones. Maybe he cloned Leon and some of the others, too._

_How else do you explain it?_

Fox reached a landing on the stairs, turning around, looking back and wishing he hadn't.

Following behind him by maybe five seconds or less was what looked to be about ten Wolf O'Donnells, their jaws dripping with saliva as they snarled and growled at him, working their way up the stairs.

Fox fired one shot, then another from his blaster, each time hitting a Wolf, each time watching them fall into a pool of their own blood.

And each time, the pursuing entourage of Wolfs only seemed to get bigger and bigger.

Letting out a short yell of panic, Fox took off up the stairs once again, praying that he could reach the doors at the end and that they'd be strong enough to hold back the legions of Wolfs.

_Maybe there's always been more than one of him. Maybe he kept a bunch of clones after Andross died. Maybe I've never even met the_ original_ Wolf._

Fox's lungs burned, he felt like he was going to vomit them up any second if he didn't slow down. His chest ached as his heart jack-hammered in his chest and his legs hurt to the point that he thought they might fall off.

But still, he ran ever more; too afraid of what might happen should he stop. Fox turned another corner in the stairs, and saw far ahead at the top of the long flight the large pair of doors that marked his salvation. He sped up the stairs, disobedient of his body's pleas, to the soundtrack of dozens of pissed, slobbering Wolfs snarling and growling after him.

_After all, how could one guy do all of the stuff they say he's done? How could one guy always find us and expect us, no matter what we did to catch him by surprise? How else can you explain that insane way that he jumps right into a fight, no matter what the odds, and always comes out on top? How many times have I shot that psycho out of the sky, only to have him staring me down again after what seems like no time at all? How can one guy die again and again?_

Fox reached the large doors, gripping the handle of one and pulling as hard as he could, hearing it screech and groan in reluctance, eventually opening up just enough for Fox to squeeze through. Once on the other side, he pulled the door closed with all of his might as his eyes tried to adjust to the bright sunlight.

Fox turned around, only to freeze in shock.

Standing there, not a hundred feet from him, was Wolf O'Donnell.

There was something different about this one. It was the way he carried himself, the way he seemed almost lazily confident and waiting for him, the very Wolf-ish way that he crossed his arms as he leaned against a broken pillar that told Fox that this, without a doubt, was the genuine article.

_Wait. Who am I kidding?_ Fox thought, _There's only _one_ Wolf O'Donnell_.

The space that they were in was some sort of rooftop garden, the sun beating down on them and on the grass-covered dirt and stone paths. In the center of the space was a single stone path that led up to a rather ceremonious looking altar with a series of pillars holding a roof up over it. Lining both sides of the path appeared to be multiple pillars as well, however these were for the most part collapsed or cracked, littering the rooftop space amongst various large slabs of white stone.

The wind blew warmly and quietly as Fox and Wolf stared each other down for a moment, neither of them speaking.

"Now I know it's really you," Fox stated simply, "Regardless of how many of you I saw back there…"

Wolf's eyebrow raised and his smile curled in amusement.

"You saw _me_? Damn, you _are_ pathetic, McCloud," Wolf smirked.

At that point, Fox noticed a pair of thin, flashlight-sized silver cylinders in Wolf's hand. They didn't look fat enough to be grenades, which Fox was glad for, since he wasn't quite ready to fight yet. He wanted answers first.

"What did you dope me with, Wolf?" Fox demanded.

Wolf gave off a short chuckle, then answered, "It's called Dalianide. It's supposed ta' make it so your dreams, memories, and everyday thoughts kinda' all melt together and loosen your grip on reality. Leon uses it ta' torture folks. It usually makes people go completely nuts and commit suicide, or it turns their brains ta' mush. I gave ya' a small enough dose not ta' kill ya', just enough ta' wear ya' down."

Fox felt like he was going to be sick with disgust at Wolf, the only thing worse than his revulsion being his anger at the whole thing.

"Wear me down for _what_?" Fox interrogated.

"A showdown, McCloud," Wolf smirked, "You an' me."

With that, Wolf tossed one of the cylinders in Fox's direction, which landed at his feet. Fox picked it up, seeing a button and a focusing lens, getting the general idea and pointing it upwards before thumbing the activation button.

A high-pitched hiss announced the plasma sword's activation as a four-foot blade of blue plasma extended from the device's end.

Wolf pressed the button on his as well, a blue plasma blade growing outward with lethal beauty.

Fuming, upset over what he'd been through just for Wolf's sick amusement, Fox wouldn't be satisfied with just what Wolf had told him.

"Wolf," Fox commanded, "What the _fuck_ was this all about?!"

"To prove one thing, McCloud. Somethin' I told ya' years ago:" Wolf growled, "You're good, but I'm _better_."

"You…" Fox snarled, "…BASTARD!"

A violent battle cry erupted from Fox as he burst forward in seething anger, slashing at Wolf with the plasma sword, watching as Wolf put up his blade in a prepared block. The plasma swords collided with a crackling of energy as the two nemesis pushed against each other's sword.

"Do you have _any_ idea what you've put me through?!" Fox bellowed.

"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. I'll bet it was hell an' then some," Wolf chuckled.

Wolf gave a shove of strength against Fox, pushing him backwards and delivering a harsh kick to Fox's stomach that sent him backwards into one of the broken pillars.

As he came to a rough stop against the pillar, his gaze drifted over towards the edge of the roof, which featured no ledge or guardrail to speak of. An unlucky person would not know that they'd fallen off of the building until they hit the ground.

Fox's attention returned to the fight as Wolf let out a roar and leapt forwards through the air with a broad slice of his plasma sword.

Fox dove forward, rolling to the side as Wolf's plasma blade sliced all the way through the pillar, making a perfectly straight cut through at least two feet of pure ferroconcrete.

The pillar slid down the edge of Wolf's cut, hitting the ground with the thump of a felled tree.

Wolf whirled around and thrust towards Fox's still crouched form, his plasma blade growing by a few inches as it stabbed through the air. Fox brought his plasma blade up, batting Wolf's sword away as he shot up to his feet.

Fox brought the plasma sword back around for a cut that would've separated Wolf from everything above his stomach, only to have it intercepted by a well-timed parry from Wolf, who then summersaulted backwards, tossing his plasma sword from his right to his left and drawing his pistol.

Fox dove to the left as Wolf's pistol barked, spitting out a massive glob of green blaster bolt, which disintegrated in a green sizzle and a scorch mark on one of the stone paths.

Fox mirrored Wolf's move, swapping hands with his sword and whipping out his pistol and firing, unleashing a stream of red blaster bolts that rained down on Wolf as he tried to dodge.

After giving off one or two yelps of shock and pain in response to being grazed by blaster bolts, Fox saw Wolf press a button on his belt with his elbow.

Fox was taken totally aback as a pinkish-white energy field enveloped Wolf, which then absorbed two of the blaster bolts and reflected them directly back at Fox.

A surprised Fox had to throw himself backwards, hitting the ground on his back to avoid his own blaster bolts.

Fox leapt up just as the energy field around Wolf disintegrated and he fired another shot from his blaster, the green bolt flashing right over Fox's right ear so close that it singed some of the hairs.

Taking cover behind a pillar, Fox called, "Where'd you learn to build a personal reflector shield?"

" 'Copied it from yours. Your frog friend was sellin' 'em on th' InterLink," Wolf replied flatly, " All's fair in love 'n war."

"Thanks a lot, Slippy," Fox muttered sarcastically.

Fox's anger was only increasing, and he deactivated his plasma sword, putting it in his pocket so that he could have his left hand ready to activate his own reflector.

Two could play at that game.

Without warning, Fox whipped around and fired a single blaster shot, pressing the button to activate his reflector the instant after he pulled the trigger.

There was an electric crackle as a blue energy field surrounded Fox, then another as Wolf's reflector shield activated as well.

The blaster bolt hit Wolf's shield and bounced back to Fox, then hit Fox's shield and bounced back to Wolf. The blaster bolt bounced back and forth twice before impacting Wolf's reflector shield once again and overloading it, sending Wolf flying back with a shower of sparks.

One thing that Wolf probably didn't know about was the limited amount of shots at one time that Slippy's reflector device could handle before the field short-circuited. Any modifications Wolf made to his likely didn't correct this design flaw.

Fox deactivated his reflector, then holstered his blaster and drew the plasma sword once again, charging towards Wolf's stunned form as he lay on the ground.

Just as Fox stabbed the plasma blade into the ground, intending to run Wolf's body through with the energy blade, Wolf rolled across the ground, getting on all fours as Fox's plasma sword melted a small hole in the roof's surface.

Fox was able to pull the plasma sword out of the roof, however he didn't have it ready when Wolf lunged forward, swiping with the bayonet on his blaster pistol.

The steel blade sliced through the upper bicep of Fox's white pilot's jacket, cutting into the flesh underneath and causing Fox to leap backwards, bringing his plasma blade up to guard.

"C'mon! I thought you were angry!" Wolf snapped, "Cut loose! Let's fuck shit up!"

Wolf's taunts just fanned the flames of Fox's rage, bringing to the surface all of the things he'd experienced in the past twenty-four hours.

He'd watched his friends suffer.

He'd been tormented by the psychological scars Krystal's absence left in him.

He'd lost some people he'd loved all over again.

And for what?

After all of that, there was no greater meaning for it all than simply a way for Wolf to get under his skin? Fox had lost every one, essentially everyone important to him, and this past day had made it all the worse because it simply reminded him of the fact that they were almost all gone because of things that _he_ did. Even if he somehow came out on top in this fight with Wolf, who would care? There was no one to go back home to. Fox was all alone.

He didn't care if he lived or died anymore, he just wanted to hurt Wolf; all that Fox wanted was to hurt Wolf in some way, so that maybe he could share some of his own pain with his nemesis.

Fox roared once again and cocked the plasma sword over his shoulder, swinging it hard at Wolf, who brought his plasma blade up to meet it.

The energy blades met with a loud crack, and Wolf stumbled backwards just a bit with the force of Fox's strike.

"I've got NO ONE left, Wolf!!" Fox screamed, slamming his plasma blade into Wolf's once more.

Wolf had to step back a bit, now on the defensive.

"Why couldn't you just let _that_ be revenge enough?!" Fox shouted, putting all of his weight behind his plasma blade as he smashed it into Wolf's block.

"Wasn't I miserable ENOUGH for you?!" Fox demanded, parrying a desperate strike from Wolf away and delivering a solid kick to his enemy's stomach. Wolf flew backwards, stumbling with a smile.

He looked up at Fox, his grin widening.

"There it is!" Wolf laughed, "Let it out! Gimme' all ya' got!"

Their swords clashed together, one of them screaming, the other one laughing as the plasma blades collided.

Fox let out a roar of effort as he shoved Wolf's plasma sword downwards with his own, trapping it near the ground and leaving Wolf's upper body exposed.

As he expected, Wolf began to step away, giving Fox the exact amount of space he required to lift his leg and lash out with a forwards roundhouse kick to Wolf's face.

A gratifying crunch of advanced electronics accompanied Wolf's bellow of pain as he fell backwards, his left hand over his face.

Fox stood back and smirked, watching Wolf steady himself and lower his hand away from his face, only to confirm that Fox's foot had met it's target: Wolf's optical implant, the photoreceptor of which was now completely cracked and useless, rendering Wolf blind in one eye.

Baring his teeth, a look of ferocity spread across his face, Wolf snarled, "Now, that was just bad manners."

Wolf let out a rage-filled howl as he leapt forward, clashing swords with Fox once more.

They continuously smashed their plasma swords together, both on the offensive, both blows merely colliding with enough force to shake both combatant's whole bodies. The air was thick with the sound of plasma blades crossing, like a thunderstorm localized on the roof of the building.

"Here's somethin' ya' got ta' think of, McCloud," Wolf growled as their plasma swords met once again with a tempestuous crack, "If you've been seein' things all this time, how do you know any a' _this_ is real?"

Fox paused, frozen with a look of dread on his face.

Wolf was right.

Maybe this was another vision.

Maybe Fox had been dreaming the whole time.

Fox's moment of hesitation was all that Wolf required, violently kicking Fox in the chest and sending him to the ground within a few feet of the edge of the roof.

As soon as he hit the ground, Wolf delivered a tremendous blow to the plasma sword in Fox's unprepared hands, knocking it out of his grip and sending it tumbling off of the edge of the building.

There was a moment of shock as Fox realized that Wolf had beaten him, and he looked into the bluish white plasma blade as Wolf brought it to bear on Fox's neck.

"Checkmate, McCloud," Wolf said with a grin.

Fox exhaled, closed his eyes, then looked back up at Wolf.

Perhaps this _was_ his destiny.

"Go ahead. Do it," Fox said solemnly, "I don't care anymore."

Wolf appeared to pause, taken aback, and he cocked his head to one side in curiosity, raising his eyebrow.

"You don't care if you die?" Wolf inquired quietly.

Fox sighed the tired sigh of one that has lived too long with nothing to show for it.

"I should've died… so many times before. Who would care if I lived?" Fox breathed.

Wolf looked stunned, insulted, almost hurt even.

"In all a' our years, the one thing I never thought I could break was your _spirit_," Wolf stated in a soulful, vaguely surprised tone, then his voice deepened into a growl of outrage, "Who cares about your friends; _I_ care whether you live or die! Who am I supposed to measure up to? Who's gonna' keep me on my toes? Who am I gonna' fight?!"

"Figure something out," Fox replied coldly.

Wolf's remaining eye narrowed, and his mouth contorted into a grimace of disgust.

"You're not Fox McCloud. You're his _carcass_," Wolf hissed, "You're what's _left_ of 'im, and it makes me sick."

With that, Wolf deactivated the beam sword, tossing it over the edge of the roof and drawing his blaster pistol.

He looked at Fox as though he had some sort of infectious disease.

"I thought this was gonna' be a pleasure and an honor," Wolf spat, "Instead, I'm doin' this out a' spite, for makin' me go ta' so much trouble all a' this time for nothin'. I can't stand the sight a' you."

Fox sniffed forlornly, looking up at Wolf with empty eyes.

"That makes two of us," Fox replied with a sad smile.

Wolf gave a loathing scoff, and then took aim at Fox's head.

Fox closed his eyes and waited for what would come.

His only wish was that wherever he went, his father would be there, too.

"Hey Wolfie!" a smooth, tough voice called, "Don't 'cha know 'bout not kickin' a guy when he's down?!"

There was the sound of two blaster shots, definitely not the sound of Wolf's blaster, then the sound of someone gasping in surprise and several footsteps running away.

It was then that Fox heard the sound of Wolf's blaster, however not nearly as close as he expected to hear it.

Fox opened his eyes to see Wolf angrily running for cover as a pair of blue blaster bolts blasted into the ground from the sky above, taking shelter behind a nearby pillar.

At that point, a lanky blue falcon in an auburn brown flight suit and a white pilot's jacket dropped from the sky in front of Fox, landing gracefully with a standard issue Cornerian ArmsCor EE-40 blaster pistol in his right hand. Giving one last cold look in the direction that Wolf had retreated, Falco Lombardi holstered his blaster and gave an arrogant avian smirk.

"Thought I smelled space trash…" Falco remarked.

"…Falco…?" Fox whispered, unsure.

Falco's smirk softened into more of a warm smile of friendship as his cold eyes glanced over at Fox.

"Hey, Foxie," Falco greeted, "That makes twice I gotta come in 'n save ya' from tha' bad guy. Now get off your ass 'n let's put this mutt down."

Falco offered a feathered hand to help Fox up, which Fox regarded with caution and fear.

_No, it can't be Falco. Falco's gone._

It was just another hallucination. Why was this happening? Why didn't Wolf just put him out of his misery?

Falco looked at Fox with concern, as if to ask what was wrong.

Before he could, however, a green blaster bolt seared through the air, nearly taking Falco's head off before he ducked, then Wolf leapt out of hiding with his blaster drawn.

"Fox McCloud ain't available now, but if you'd like to leave a message, that'd be just fine…" Wolf growled menacingly, laughing slightly.

Falco's beak returned to it's default smirk position.

"Yeah, I gotta' message for ya':" Falco said, quickly drawing his pistol and aiming it at Wolf, "How ya' doin'?"

Falco's blaster screeched, shooting out four shots as Wolf dove back behind the pillars, darting between them as he talked.

"Put a bird an' a wolf in a room together an' guess which one's walkin' out alive…" Wolf threatened.

"I dunno, I'd say the one that's still got depth perception's got an advantage," Falco shrugged coolly, "Tell ya' what, Wolfie, I'll do ya' a favor: I'll do my best ta' stay on tha' side ya' can still _see_ outta."

"I've always wondered:" Wolf called out, "How many _bones_ am I gonna have to break to shut that beak a' yours up?"

"Ya' talkin' 'bout my bones, Wolfie…" Falco inquired, "Or _yours_?"

Wolf laughed bitterly.

"You always were all talk, Falco", Wolf called out.

Falco approached the series of pillars closely, then taunted, "Ya' gonna bark all day, little dog, or ya' gonna bite?"

With an animal growl, Wolf leapt out from behind the pillars, lunging at Falco with his claws bared.

Falco hopped backwards, lashing out with a kick towards Wolf's side. Wolf caught Falco's foot in his other hand, then wrapped both hands around Falco's boot and swung hard, throwing Falco off his feet, through the air, and across the roof.

Falco landed on his feet, drawing his pistol just as Wolf drew his. The two of them got into a strafing run across the roof, letting off shots at each other that mostly came close, but not close enough.

Wolf leapt to the ground, firing a shot at the top of one of the broken pillars near where Falco was.

The green blaster bolt from Wolf's pistol disintegrated, toppling the pillar over towards Falco, who dove through the air and rolled along the ground, just barely missing the falling pillar as it crashed into the roof.

From his prostrate position on the roof, Wolf fired another blaster shot at Falco, and Fox watched as Falco leapt high into the air, flipping before landing gracefully on the ground. Wolf rose to his feet, holstering his firearm and running towards the blue falcon.

His blaster still drawn, Falco had no qualms about squeezing off one or two shots at Wolf as he closed in, throwing the pistol back into it's holster just as Wolf got too close for comfort. Wolf let out a feral snarl as he swiped at Falco's head with his clawed fingers, each time just barely missing the falcon as he dodged from side to side. Abruptly in the middle of Wolf's swipe-fest, Falco grabbed both of Wolf's wrists, yanked him forwards and kneed him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of Wolf with a rough yelp. As Wolf's head jerked forward, so did Falco's, head butting him in the skull, inciting a growl of pain from Wolf. Finally, Falco delivered a forceful kick to Wolf's sternum, throwing him backwards against a pillar.

Falco sprinted forwards to catch Wolf whilst he was still off guard, apparently misjudging Wolf's reaction time and receiving a vicious drop-kick that connected cleanly with Falco's left arm, producing a distinctive squawk.

Falco stumbled backwards and Wolf came forward, sending he heel of his palm straight into Falco's beak, knocking the bird's head back along with his body.

As Falco tripped backwards, his wing-like left hand sliced through the air in a beautiful knifehand strike directly to the right side of Wolf's neck, denying any opportunities for him to continue his assault. Falco and Wolf were able to recover at nearly the same time, Falco running towards Wolf confidently, flipping through the air and slapping the back of Wolf's head as he sailed over top of him.

Wolf caught Falco just as he landed, elbowing him hard in the chest, then delivering a swift knee to Falco's side.

Falco let out a scream as the spike on Wolf's kneepads gouged into his ribs, leaving a nicely-sized stab wound for him to worry about bleeding from. Angrily, Falco slugged Wolf in the jaw with a hard right hook, leaping backwards through the air to avoid more close quarters combat with Wolf.

"Quit hoppin' around, ya' little bastard," Wolf snarled.

"We all got our talents, Wolfie," Falco explained condescendingly, "Birds fly, 'n dogs drool profusely. I'd say it's a trade-off."

"Stop jumpin' the fuck around before I make ya'," Wolf barked.

"Come 'n get it, doggy," Falco taunted, whistling.

Wolf's snarl deepened as he dashed for Falco, who leapt into the air with a laugh.

A devious look on his face, Wolf hopped up into the air as Falco sailed over him, grabbing two of Falco's massive blue tail feathers and yanking hard.

Falco let out a humiliating, high pitched scream as Wolf plucked out two of the three foot long blue feathers and began to laugh to himself, rubbing his thumb up and down the pilfered plumage as he gathered them up in his hands.

Falco landed in a rage, his intense eyes glaring with a passionate, fiery hate.

"You plucked my fuckin' FEATHERS?!" Falco roared indignantly, "You motherfuckin' dickless piece 'a shit!!"

Wolf let out a mighty laugh and waved the feathers through the air before placing them on the ground and stomping on them hard. Falco only looked more pissed, if that was even possible.

"Aww, did I hurt ya'?" Wolf grinned.

"Not as much as I'm gonna hurt _you_!" Falco snapped, diving forward.

Wolf struck at Falco first as he approached, swiping out with the claws on his left hand. Falco caught Wolf's hand in his left hand and jerked Wolf forward, punching him right in the forehead, stunning him. Wolf let out a yelp of pain and surprise, but obviously wasn't prepared for Falco's feathered fingers to grip onto the strap of Wolf's broken optical implant and rip it out of his eye socket.

Wolf let out a bloodcurdling screech as the implant was torn free of his eye, exposing the empty, dark hole where his left eye used to be.

Not stopping there, Falco tossed the implant aside, grabbed both sides of Wolf's vest for grip, and proceeded to viciously peck at Wolf's face, aiming for his empty eye socket and hitting his mark several times. Several screams of agony erupted from Wolf's mouth as Falco's beak pounded mercilessly into his face, repeatedly letting loose an onslaught of pain.

"How ya' like that, 'cha fuckin' fuzzball?! Huh?! Whaddaya think 'a that?!" Falco yelled as he pecked into Wolf's face.

With surprising speed, Wolf's hand squeezed tight on Falco's neck, digging his sharp claws into Falco's flesh and drawing blood whilst simultaneously strangling him. Wolf then swept Falco's feet out from under him and slammed the bird to the ground; wrapping both hands tight around his neck as Falco's beak came wide open in a violent hiss.

"_I_ think…" Wolf snarled, blood oozing from his eye socket and from various other points around his face, "I'm gonna fix me some parrot soup tonight…"

Wolf's jaws opened up and he felt the animal inside of him taking over, telling him to eat this piece of shit bird alive.

As Fox sat there, watching Falco in the grips of Wolf, he thought of how different this was from the other hallucinations he'd had. In all of the other ones, Fox was somehow helpless to stop the events.

Now, however, he had complete control of his body.

Conceivably, if he wanted to, couldn't he interfere with the vision?

Then maybe that meant that all of this wasn't a hallucination.

His father's words came back to him for some reason: _You can't let fear control you, Fox... Nothing hurts more than losing the people close to you, but that's a part of life. That's why you've always got to have people that you trust and love, so that they can catch you when you fall._

Maybe Falco really did come back for him.

Maybe he could save his friend right now.

Maybe it _wasn't_ too late for Fox, either.

As Wolf's maw opened, ready to devour Falco, Fox leapt up to his feet and dashed forwards, tightening his right hand into a fist as he got closer and closer.

Since Wolf's left side, his blind side, was the side facing Fox, it came as a total surprise attack when Fox's fist slammed right into Wolf's bottom jaw, knocking free a tooth and throwing him off of Falco.

A shocked Wolf slowly collected himself on the floor, trying to get up as Fox looked back at his prostrate friend, this time extending his hand to help him up.

Quietly, Falco took Fox's hand, getting quickly to his feet.

"'Was wonderin' when ya' were gonna wake the fuck up," Falco sighed.

They looked at each other, then looked straight ahead, where Wolf now stood, bleeding from his eye socket, face and mouth, looking tired and bloodied, and with nowhere to run.

He stared at them with his one working eye filled with animal rage and hate, but at the same time he looked willing to accept what he knew they would do.

With cold precision, both Fox and Falco drew their blaster pistols and leveled them at Wolf.

The few moments that they took to line up their sights perfectly could've possibly changed the course of their lives, and possibly ended the life of Wolf O'Donnell.

Before those few moments were over, however, there was the distinctive, loud rumbling sound of a pair of G-diffusers working on a vertical take-off protocol, and then a pair of VenCom B-35 Wolfen star fighters rose up to the level of the roof, their laser cannons armed and ready. At the helm of one Wolfen was a maniacal chameleon with a triangular head, and at the other was a self-absorbed black cat with a white scar below his eye.

All three of them looked stunned to see the two star fighters, Wolf possibly being the most shocked as he looked behind himself to see the hovering ships.

When his head turned around to face Fox and Falco, however, he wore the cruel, devious grin that Wolf O'Donnell was known for. Without another word, as if daring Fox and Falco to take their shots, Wolf sprinted to the edge of the roof and leapt through the air, wrapping his arms around one of the wings of Leon Powalski's Wolfen, pulling himself and making a perch on the wing.

Fox and Falco looked at each other quickly, knowing what would be coming next, and both of them saw the neighboring building separated by a rather wide alleyway as the only means of escape. They both took off running just as Wolf O'Donnell's triumphant laughter began to sound. Fox and Falco leapt through the air, coming in for a rough landing on the neighboring building just as the barking of numerous high-powered laser cannons filled the air, and dozens of laser bolts slammed into the roof of the building, engulfing it in explosions.

Fox and Falco put their arms over their heads to shield themselves as the explosions began to dissipate, and with a mournful screaming a pair of Wolfen star fighters sailed over their heads, carrying a single stowaway.

Riding atop Leon's Wolfen, Wolf tried to ignore the pain of his injuries, regardless of the extent to which they hurt. He carefully pulled out the small spare comlink unit he kept in his pocket for emergencies, slipping it into his ear and turning it on. It automatically picked up the Wolfen's frequency.

"Wolf!" Leon cried, "Are you alright?!"

"I will be," Wolf growled, "Just take it easy 'til you drop me off at my Wolfen. What the hell are ya' guys doing here?"

"You're the boss, remember Wolf?" Leon said, "Can't exactly have StarWolf without you. If we let you die, what'll we do for fun?"

"I just came because I hate the bird," Panther purred, "You know I wouldn't pass up the chance to take a shot at him."

Wolf detected the undercurrent of affection in their voices, and to his surprise there didn't seem to be anything fake about it. It sounded like, underneath their statements, they had genuinely cared for his wellbeing. It was this new discovery, rather than his near-defeat, that Wolf focused on as his compatriots flew him back to his ship.

Both Fox and Falco looked up in awe as the Wolfens hovered out of view, and then they both let out massive exhalations of relief.

They sat there for a moment, catching their breath, and sharing a silence together as sweaty, bleeding brothers in arms.

When Fox finally had the breath to speak, he came right out and said to Falco, "I…didn't think you'd be coming back. I thought you didn't want to see me again."

That warm smile appeared on Falco's face again as he glanced over at Fox once more.

"I kept an eye on tha' StarFox frequency, in case ya' eva' thought a' sayin' ya' sorry or somethin'," Falco shrugged, "'N, well, that's tha' two good things 'bout us birds. We change our minds easily."

Fox gave a soft chuckle.

"What's the second?" Fox inquired.

Falco's smile deepened, "No matta' how far we fly, we always find our way home."

A warm feeling rose up in Fox's chest, and he found that he just couldn't take it anymore, embracing Falco like he would his brother and sobbing slightly into his neck, "Oh, please, God. Please be real. Please let this be real…"

Falco looked shocked for a moment, then slowly but surely allowed a feathered hand to rest on Fox's back and words of comfort emanate from his beak.

"It's gonna be alright, okay, Foxie?" Falco whispered, "Ya' gonna be alright, man."

Fox had never thought he'd be so happy to hear those words.

As Fox McCloud reconciled with his wing mate rescuer, and the engine trails of three Wolfen star fighters shooting off into space seared across the heavens, the mid-day sun gleamed warmly down upon the planet of Temple.

* * *

Did you really think I'd leave you hanging there? To give a proper sense of pacing and closure, I've written a true conclusion to this story as the next chapter. Don't worry, it's super short. Also, as an added bonus, those of you that review and send me a private message requesting it, I'll send you a copy of this chapter's _original _introduction, which was written from Falco's point of view. Eventually, I decided that, since Falco isn't really a central character, regardless of his importance, I could just include his thoughts and feelings in the dream sequence. After watching _The Lion King_ and hearing Kansas' "Carry On Wayward Son", I decided that it would be a bit more heart wrenching to include Fox's dream about his father as the introduction. I thought if it was more of an abstract dream and thought sequence that bled into and combined with the actual narrative rather than the soliloquies of the previous two chapters, it was symbolic of the way Fox's thoughts were disorganized and chaotic at the time, as if he was loosing his sense of identity in his own mind. But whatever. Go on and finish this story.


	4. Epilogue: The Day After

"**My apologies, Lord O'Donnell,**" IG-N 96's scratchy voice informed Wolf, "**But your replacement optical implant won't be ready for some time. In the meantime, I'm afraid you'll have to wear your old eye patch**."

"It's not like somethin' I haven't done before," Wolf growled, fitting the patch over his empty left eye socket.

Looking at himself in the mirror in his quarters on the _Lone Wolf_, it was plain to see that Wolf had some damage to heal. With the bandages on his face from where Falco had pecked him, along with the replacement tooth he'd gotten from Fox's right hook, Wolf had to say that the two of them had put up a pretty good fight. The idea of being prepared for a rematch made the thought of loosing his first all-out physical brawl against them more palatable.

The dark, rusty red interior of the _Lone Wolf_ looked somewhat unsettling, but Wolf found that the color helped him focus. It also complimented the stars, whenever there was a view port in one of the walls. Wolf almost lost himself, looking out at the infinite stars from his window view port, when he realized that IG was still in the room.

"IG, what's Leon up to?" Wolf inquired, trying to find out why the robot was still there.

"**I believe he's cooking and killing a small creature, in that order, in the galley, Lord O'Donnell**," IG offered.

"What about Panther?" Wolf continued.

"**Chatting with a young female on the InterLink. I believe he is asking the young lady her sizes at this point,**" IG responded.

After a brief pause, Wolf inquired, "Is there somethin' else, IG?"

"**I was simply wondering, Lord O'Donnell, if you are still feeling like you truly need to duel Fox McCloud in order to prove something to yourself,**" IG asked.

Wolf thought for a second and responded, slowly, "No. Not really, IG."

"**Yet it cannot really be said that you emerged victorious, Lord O'Donnell,**" IG pointed out.

"Hm," Wolf said with a smile, "Why do you think that is?"

"**If I may offer the opinion of a simple robot, sir,**" IG stated, "**I believe that you have always harbored some hard feelings towards Fox McCloud, granted. However, it is my belief that, recently, since Team StarFox essentially disbanded, you began to feel that perhaps, that question of which of you is truly better might never be answered. You are not the most trusting of beings, sir, however, you feared that we might think you inferior to McCloud, and you would be unable to prove us wrong. So, you became obsessed with defeating Fox McCloud, alone and permanently.**"

Raising an eyebrow, struggling to keep an open mind, Wolf asked, "Why don't you think I feel that anymore, IG?"

"**Because, sir, I believe that this experience has taught you three things: First, that, for better or worse, you are **_**not**_** Fox McCloud. I believe that you also realize, however, that Fox McCloud is not necessarily better off than you. Second, I think you may be slowly coming to realize that, though we may express it differently, we all have our own respect and affection for you, Lord O'Donnell. It matters not to us which of you is better, Fox McCloud or you, because you will always be the greatest soldier and pilot in the galaxy to _us_, Lord O'Donnell.**"

Wolf smiled condescendingly. "Do me a favor and don't be sugarcoatin' it all like that. Ya' don't have to lie to _me_, IG," Wolf mumbled.

"**My programming, Lord O'Donnell, renders me quite incapable of lying. Unless of course, you ask me to, sir,**" IG answered, his synthetic voice having just the slightest touch of warmth for a moment.

Wolf gave a half-smile, not quite sure how to deal with it. He wasn't used to the idea of people caring about him. Even if it was Leon, Panther and IG's way of caring about him.

"What's the third thing ya' think I learned, IG?" Wolf interrogated quietly, changing the subject.

"**Simply sir, that if Fox McCloud puts his life back together and re-forms Team StarFox, they will always be there should you wish to challenge them. From my observations of sentient being's behavior, I believe that Fox McCloud will not go without his former comrades for much longer, given the events that have occurred. You no longer have any need to worry, Lord O'Donnell, since we can probably expect Team StarFox to 'keep you on your toes' as you so eloquently put it, for quite some time, sir**," IG lectured.

"So, you're sayin' that by puttin' McCloud through the hell I put him through, I pushed him to do better, which is gonna push me to do better," Wolf reasoned.

"**As always, Lord O'Donnell, my point is firmly in your grasp. Now, if you don't mind, sir, I'd like to retire. I believe this has been quite enough excitement in a twenty four hour period for **_**this**_** robot**," IG saluted.

"Alright. 'Night, IG," Wolf nodded.

"**Good night, sir,**" IG-N 96 responded with a curt bow, then exited Wolf's quarters.

As soon as he was gone, Wolf let out a smile, this time for no one but himself.

Perhaps IG was right.

Perhaps he did have people that cared about him, too.

Perhaps it didn't matter to him about winning the contest between him and Fox as much as the idea of there always being just a contest. The idea of there always being a rematch.

If that was true, then Wolf had done exactly what he'd set out to do.

Fox McCloud was back from the dead, so to speak.

Which meant that, in his own way, so was Wolf O'Donnell.

* * *

"ROB, have you entered the navigation data for the warp engines?" Fox requested from the captain's seat on the bridge of the _Great Fox_.

"**Affirmative. Engines primed for maximum warp. Coordinates entered for Corneria. Awaiting jump clearance,**" ROB-64 responded.

As the robot turned towards the navicomputer, Fox noticed the series of deep scratches and the multitude of dents that had resulted from ROB's apparent fight with Wolf.

He gave off a quiet laugh to himself. He wasn't sure if he wanted to repair the scuffs and dents ROB had received, or maybe keep them to give the robot a bit more character.

Behind Fox, the doors to the bridge opened with a hiss, and Falco strode onto the bridge, coming to a stop by Fox's chair.

"Now, ya' sure ya' wanna do this?" Falco inquired, "Might be kind a' hard afta' six months. Not ta' mention how hard it's gonna be ta' find Krystal."

"Yeah," Fox nodded, "I have to do this. The galaxy needs Team StarFox. So do I."

"Yeah," Falco admitted reluctantly, "Me too."

"We're gonna get the team back together and make everything right again," Fox said quietly, "With everyone."

"Well, it's not gonna' be tha' greatest time a' ya' life doin' it, but I guess it's worth it," Falco smiled, patting Fox's shoulder.

Fox looked squarely ahead out of the panoramic view port of the bridge, as the stars twinkled in the vast, infinite, empty space before them.

Before, Fox had felt lost in the emptiness, in the quietness.

Now, it filled him with a sense of relief to know that, somewhere in that vast nowhere was Peppy, Slippy, and Krystal. All that he had to do was just find them again.

And though it was little more than a simple feeling, it made all the difference in the universe, because, instead of a feeling of nothingness and lack of purpose, there was the overriding feeling that Fox was going to be alright.

Because, somewhere, out there, he had people that loved him.

"**Jump clearance granted. Receiving warp gate broadcast from Beltino Orbital Gate,**" ROB announced.

Ahead of the _Great Fox_, space seemed to bend inwards into itself, forming a slowly-widening tunnel in space that would take them to Corneria in less than a matter of hours.

"Make sure ya' safety bars are down an' please keep ya' arms an' legs inside tha' ride at all times," Falco joked, "The exits are located here and here, howeva' in the event of an emergency at fasta' than light speeds, ya' more than likely shit outta luck."

Following some of his own advice, Falco sat down at a workstation seat in order to secure himself for the warp jump.

"**Warp gate broadcast received. Gate fully formed and stable. All systems are go,**" ROB announced, "_**Great Fox **_**making jump to maximum warp in T-minus five, four, three, two, one. Ignition.**"

With that, the _Great Fox _began to rumble as her plasma warp engines fully engaged, propelling her forwards and into the wormhole.

Meteors, planets, star systems began to whiz by the _Great Fox_' s view port so fast that they were a mere white blur amongst the black background.

"_**Great Fox **_**has achieved maximum warp stability. ETA at Corneria is four hours and forty minutes,**" ROB informed them.

As the whole galaxy rolled by, with all of its endless nothingness amounting to just that, nothing, as long as he had people like Falco and Peppy and Slippy and Krystal close to him, Fox felt a feeling of thankfulness, of gratitude for the first time in a long time for all that he truly had, regardless of the fact that now wasn't the greatest day of his life.

Indeed, it was not the greatest day of Fox's life.

But it was still a great day to be alive.

* * *

The End. Cue "Message in a Bottle" by the Police, or "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane, both of which were heavily listened to during the writing of this story, and both of which have some thematic parallels with this story ("Message in a Bottle" is about loneliness and isolation; "White Rabbit" is about hallucinogenic drugs). I thank all of you that have reviewed this story, and I encourage you to review the story in its entirety. Thank you and good night, ladies and germs, you've been a WONDERFUL audience!!


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